


The Camp

by Gunney



Series: Nesting Doll [2]
Category: Hogan's Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunney/pseuds/Gunney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part II in the Nesting Doll series. Hogan has spent three months in Austria and Stalag 13 has begun to rebuild after his shocking departure. Now Hogan needs some of his own men in on the caper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Austria

The sun rose over Gusen, a prison camp west of Linz, Austria, a few minutes before seven am. Most of the POWs imprisoned in the camp were already awake, and had been for several hours. As ordered, the ranking man or chosen leader in each barrack woke at five and organized those responsible for breakfast detail. An hour later the rest of the men were awakened to take mess and look after policing of the barracks.

That morning, just as a shaft of sunlight hit the inner courtyard, a carefully orchestrated fist fight began in Barracks 1A, spilling out of the building and drawing together a modest collection of prisoners. This drew the surprised guards into the wire an hour and a half before scheduled morning roll call.

Their attention focused on the fight, the guards missed the desperate sprint of one prisoner from the back of the giant U-shaped barracks affectionately referred to as The Zoo, to the small tool shed that had been erected by the prisoners. The shed door was padlocked when not in use, but the prisoner was quick about opening the sliding trick door on the back. In seconds he had disappeared from view at about the same time that the frantic guards managed to separate the combatants.

One of the SS men responsible for maintaining discipline sent continuous concerned looks toward the officer's barracks until a familiar figure started down the slight incline toward the crowd of enlisted men. As the brown haired colonel in an American bomber jacket stepped into view, voices were hushed and men in various states of dress pulled themselves to attention. Even the German SS men straightened a little more at his approach, waiting for the officer to take care of the situation as he always did.

"Alright, Private Caine, you want to tell me what's going on here?" The American demanded, referring to a short, but very military Prussian soldier.

The man snapped off a salute appropriate for a man of his rank in the Russian army and reported in broken English, "Situation under control, Colonel Hogan. Men were fighting over…missing toothbrush."

"A toothbrush?" The colonel repeated, sending disbelieving looks toward the SS men gathered around the prisoners before shaking his head. "What have I told you fellas about the petty theft going on in the barracks?"

The men standing erect before him didn't respond verbally, but a few dropped their gazes, or slumped just a little in what might have been interpreted as shame.

"Cigarettes or food I can understand, but a toothbrush!? Any man needing personal hygiene equipment can come to the officer's barracks and make a requisition. We're all in the same boat here, this stealing is ridiculous. The two men responsible for starting this fight will report to me following roll call. You men are dismissed."

Few of the prisoners gathered actually understood the reprimand, but it didn't matter. The dismissal had taken no more than a minute's time, too fast for the SS guards to get in their own licks. They were beginning to grow accustomed to this however.

The new ranking prisoner in the POW camp had a firm hold over the men, inspired military confidence on both sides of the electric wire and while he was in every way American, both German and Russian nationals had thought more than a few times about what it would do for the war effort to have Hogan in their army.

"Roll call in forty minutes!" One of the guards shouted, the only one fluent in English and Russian, and the SS retreated to the guard house near the main gates.

The minute the guards were out of ear shot Hogan nodded approval to the prisoners that had started the fight then motioned for Caine to come closer.

"Assuming all went well, my man should be outside the walls as we speak. We'll need another dust up right when they start roll call. Doesn't have to be too big, and the purpose can be the same."

"Dah. Is no problem, Colonel."

Hogan nodded and asked, "How are you boys fixed for rations this morning?"

The men that surrounded Caine started to smile brightly at the question but left it to their unofficial leader to respond. Meals had improved tenfold in the three months that Hogan had been in the prison camp. Few of the men knew where the fresh eggs, cheese, potatoes and vegetables were coming from but all of them understood that as long as they kept their mouths shut about it, they would get their share.

Caine gave him a tight lipped smile, and nodded his head firmly, a move that made him look remarkably like his father. Hogan felt himself yet again tempted to say something, but the timing wasn't right so he kept quiet.

"We will survive." The young man responded, then glanced at the guards settling into their morning cups of coffee and asked, "Will anymore of us 'die' today?"

Hogan smirked but shook his head. "Not today. We wanna make sure my man blends in nice and smooth before we run any other risks. Just remember, don't let the goons count you without the scuff up."

"What if your man does not make it?" Caine asked, his heart fluttering near his throat, the way it did every time the Colonel introduced one of his new fantastic schemes.

Hogan pursed his lips, not wanting to think about what might have happened if the plan had gone wayward on the other end. It could happen, easily, but he needed to believe otherwise and so did his new men.

"He'll be there." Hogan said, with absolute confidence, then traded salutes and headed back for the officer's barracks.

Inside the single story building the cook stove they had built flush with the floor, under the base boards of one of the bunks, was churning out an incredible smell. Robert Hogan had lucked out again, finding a man who had been a baker before the war. Fresh bread every morning, sometimes scones when there was fruit available. It wasn't LeBeau's cooking but it would do.

"Did he make it out?" A voice asked anxiously the second Hogan was through the door. A half dozen men jumped in to ask the same question and the colonel put his hands up to get them quieted.

"He made it out." Hogan said, and waited to make sure each of the men around him understood, then he looked to his second in command. "We'll do the same thing at the beginning of roll call and keep all other activities at an absolute minimum for today."

Lieutenant Igor Piotkin, a Russian pilot that had known Hogan longer than any other man in the camp, nodded and quickly translated the rest of what Hogan had to say into the native language of the men in the barrack. The response was a general releasing of held breaths. The promised holiday from risky behavior was a welcome prospect for the body of junior officers still not accustomed to Hogan's scheming.

"And since it's Sunday, we can knock off the gardening too." Hogan added, with a smirk. Half the men understood him without need for translation and gave him shouts of approval. The rest waited for Igor to translate, but the response was the same.

Hogan moved to the small private room that had been built less than a month ago on the side of the officer's barracks and shut himself inside his new quarters, taking off his cap as he did. The room was still desperately bare compared to his room back at Stalag 13, but Gusen's security was tighter, the guards a lot less friendly. He had to do without the amenities of home here, and that was just fine. He didn't plan to make it a lengthy stay.

He twisted the taps of the bucket sink they'd installed two weeks ago and set about washing up and shaving, ears attuned to the continuous murmur of activity in the other room and coming through the small window. His third sweep of the razor drew blood and he finally admitted to himself that he was excited. He hadn't seen any of his old crew in three months, and had barely exchanged a handful of communications with them in that time. If all went well he'd have two of them joining him in camp by week's end.

It meant something of a brief family reunion. It also meant a lot of work that needed to be done in a short period of time.

Hogan pressed a cloth to the bleeding nick and considered his reflection in the scrap of mirror one of his men had salvaged. His broken rib had healed allowing him better sleep, but he still looked underweight and baggy eyed in the mirror. At the same time the improved rations had begun to transform the other men, filling in the hollow spots in their frames. They were stronger, happier, ready to do more.

Win a war? Who knew?

Roll call came fast. The fifteen men in the officer's barracks marched down to The Zoo in formation and began organizing the enlisted men into their usual tiers, getting the group gathered and at attention well in advance of the SS Guards. Hogan stood facing the men, both so that he could see the trouble makers to cue them, and so that he could see the tool shed.

His heart was racing, his body twitching a little at the rush of anxiety induced adrenaline, increasing for every minute that he had to wait. Just as the SS guards started through the gate he saw the lock on the tool shed rattle. He fought the grin, resettled his hat on his head, then did a swift right-about-face and dug his thumbs into his pockets.

Twelve seconds later a fight broke out. Ten minutes later the fight had been resolved and the men counted with no prisoners missing. The guards seemed pleased that no one had died overnight either and returned to their shack.

The men were temporarily dismissed and Hogan headed back to the officer's barracks, stopping when he was interrupted by a rumpled, unshaven corporal dressed in a ratty Russian uniform. The man put a knuckle to his brow and Hogan responded with a sharp salute.

"Permission to join this 'ere prison camp, gov'na?" The Corporal piped in his rich cockney, grinning brightly through the beard growth he'd been ordered to come into camp with.

Hogan fought the grin and dropped his voice as he said, "Newkirk…could you at least try to sound Russian?"

"It's a hard accent, sir, and all those consonants. Atrocious." Corporal Peter Newkirk complained light heartedly, before the two continued walking together to the officer's barracks.

"Ivan make it out alright?" Hogan asked, under his breath.

"Dressed as a civilian, yes sir. Should hit the farm by tonight. It's a right ingenious plan you've got there by the way, Colonel." Newkirk added, looking over the compound just before they stepped into the barracks.

"Took some doing to arrange, but it's working for both us and the farmer." Hogan said, "How much did Ivan tell you?"

"Nothin' really about the camp 'ere, just about the farm, and your orders. Seemed not to trust me for some reason."

Hogan smirked, "Can't imagine why."

Newkirk gave him a facetious shrug and both men chuckled.

"I'll give you a tour here in a bit. You remember Igor?"

"Course, 'ow are ya mate?" Newkirk exchanged handshakes with the Russian Lieutenant once again surprised at the ferocity of the man's strength and glad this time that the man knew they were on the same side.

"Some other fellas you should meet. This is Sgt. Leo Evanovich. Former baker and handy with forged papers. So far he's done two requisitions and a death certificate that made it past the camp commandant." The man Hogan pointed to was a hair over six feet and skinny as a rail, kneeling in a curved slender line over the stove hidden under the bunk.

Newkirk eyed the contraption closely. Set into a thick hearth of stone was an iron box with a closed lid, not unlike a normal wood stove. Wood was fed into the box from above, and presumably the smoke escaped through a pipe under the floorboards. He turned in a circle and looked at Hogan. "No stove allowed in the barracks? What are the men to do in the winter?"

"They did have a stove to begin with, but the goons started taking things away a year ago. This spring the stove was the last to go. The guards have promised to give it back before winter sets in but…I got a little impatient."

Newkirk grinned and shook his head, not at all surprised. "Fantastic! Where does the smoke go?"

"There's an abandoned shack about a hundred feet outside the wire, that way. It's just behind the tree line and mostly invisible unless you know it's there. About three times a day there's smoke coming from the shack, but none of the guards ever see anyone go in or out. We laid pipe for it up to the fence during a minor improvement project, and some of our farm escapees laid the rest the next day." Hogan was fighting the grin again, and those that could understand English were smirking too. "The SS think the shack is haunted."

There was a low rumble of chuckles among the men before Hogan lightly slapped the side of a bunk and a bald head popped into view. The man who belonged to the head was a big fellow, probably capable of ranking as a body builder were he able to get enough protein into his system. He was imposing either way and Newkirk did a double take between the big man on the bunk and Lieutenant Piotkin, wondering vaguely if they were brothers.

"Newkirk, meet Nestor."

"Nestor…" Newkirk nodded in greeting, stepping back a foot or two as the giant dropped down to his feet, then smiled in a way that some might have considered welcoming. Others might just think he was hungry.

"Corporal Nestor is, among other things, my radio man."

"R-radio man?" Newkirk asked with mild disbelief, then gave a friendly smile to the man. "Does he hold the antennae?"

"No…no, he's a communications engineer…he's also…not small." Hogan said carefully.

Newkirk nodded at the vague description that sort of qualified. They moved on, Hogan tossing out a few more names that Newkirk barely registered before they were moving out of the barracks along with the rest of the officers. Not a word had been spoken, nor an order given, but every man in the barracks fell into a loose formation with Hogan, Igor and Newkirk at the head.

"What's this then?"

"Morning constitutional." Hogan said, secretly delighting in the look of alarm that Newkirk gave him. Hogan merely smiled and stepped off with his left foot leading the way to The Zoo where they picked up the rest of the men. Their numbers were now at 254, including Newkirk, and expected to rise in the next few weeks if rumors of nearby fighting were to be believed.

"You've got everybody doin' this, Colonel?" Newkirk asked with surprise, noting that the rest of the junior officers had fallen back to march with the enlisted men.

"Most mornings. In the evenings too depending on what we have going on."

"For heaven's sake why?"

Hogan nodded his head toward one of the guard towers as they passed it, "Well for one thing, it gives the goons somethin' to look at. Something to look forward to. And something to wonder about if I decide I want them wondering."

Newkirk nodded absently, knowing that side of Colonel Hogan's thinking all too well.

"He is mastermind of psychology, nyet?" Igor added, smirking proudly over Newkirk's head at Hogan.

"Mastermind…eh…and for another thing?" Newkirk prompted.

Hogan gave a sidelong glance to Igor then jerked his head over his shoulder. "One of the first things I realized when Hochstetter dumped me here was that this wasn't Stalag 13."

Newkirk turned a carefully controlled look toward Hogan, checking that his eyes weren't dilated as he said, "I suppose that I should be relieved that that wasn't the last thing you realized."

Hogan gave him a perturbed look then said, "What I mean is, these men were soldiers first, and potential double agents, spies and escapees second. At Stalag 13 it's the other way around. I figured I had to build on what I had. Reminding them that they were soldiers and encouraging them to act like it, did the trick."

"I do believe that that is why you're an officer." Newkirk said.

"You've developed quite the cheek with me gone, Newkirk." Hogan said, his tone containing a warning that Newkirk didn't quite catch in time.

Just as Newkirk was responding with yet another sharp comment, Hogan gave Igor a subtle nod. The Russian barked an order over his shoulder as they completed their first circuit of the grounds, and the men immediately picked up the pace to a light, loping run. Hogan smirked as Newkirk tripped over his ankles for a few seconds, then fell into rhythm with the rest.

"Funny, sir. Very funny." Newkirk griped.

Hogan had the men complete two laps at that pace before he gave the order to halt.

"Igor, we've been given permission for our Sunday ball game. You know where the equipment is. All those participating may commence."

"Spasibo, Colonel." Igor smiled, snapping a salute before he began to bark in Russian, sending men scattering to the barracks.

"Ball game, sir?" Newkirk asked, recovering well enough from the run. They hadn't been doing much in the way of calisthenics under the watchful eye of Klink, but behind the scenes there had been plenty of opportunities for running in the past few months.

"Yep. Soccer. Well…football to you."

Even as they watched some of the men were applying wetted mud to the skin under their eyes, and others donning special jerseys that had been created out of spare uniform shirts. The procedure seemed almost ceremonial.

"They're takin' themselves awful serious for a game amongst prisoners."

"It's…uh…less of a game, and more of a memorial, I think, Newkirk. I haven't been able to get the full story yet, but it has something to do with a game in Ukraine played between Germans and Russians last fall."

"Let me guess, the Russian players were advised not to win…"

Hogan nodded, his face sobering.

"And when they did win, the Germans…"

Hogan sighed, watching the men gather in a circle, removing various caps and headgear as their erstwhile chaplain blessed the match. "That's the rumor anyway."

The prayer ended and the men spread out over the open field of dirt, commencing the game with little else in the way of preparation.

"Did you want to watch the game?" Hogan asked with a pleased smile.

Newkirk crossed his arms over his chest and eyed the Colonel before he said, "You know we've been worryin' ourselves to death most nights, devastated over the 'orrible things that must be 'appenin to you at the hands of the Gestapo." A grin started to creep over the serious look the Englander was trying to maintain.

Hogan nodded, knowing exactly what Newkirk was saying, and feeling the same way. "Carter, healing up alright?"

Newkirk nodded. "Stubborn and impossible to keep off his feet, but he's up an' about like always."

"Kinch?"

"He was a might put out when you asked for Carter an' me to make the commute instead of 'im, but he understood why. Makes for a fine leader. Almost as bad a schemer as you are, too."

"My boy the officer-in-training." Hogan said, his eyes drifting toward the game, but his mind a hundred miles away.

"Colonel, you didn't start this exchange program just to educate the lot of us on 'ow Austrian prison camps run." Newkirk prompted after a few minutes of silence. He caught the barest of winces that crossed Hogan's face, and knew that he'd been right. Hogan had been dancing around the real reason Newkirk was there intentionally.

"The man I traded places with…he's not comin' back is 'e?"

Hogan shook his head. "He has about three weeks of indentured servitude with the farmer, then he's on his own, complete with civilian clothes, papers, and money. Every man before him that's gone under the wire has been pronounced officially dead, and buried. We use the wood that we requisition for coffins to shore up the tunnel you came through, and the dead man waits twenty-four hours before going out to the farm. The farmer gets free labor for a short while, and we get one more POW out of Austria."

Newkirk studied Hogan for a few minutes more, then nodded his head. "I wouldn't 'ave believed it if I 'adn't seen it meself."

Hogan raised an eyebrow, but didn't look at the corporal pretending interest in the game. "Seen what, Newkirk?"

"You're plannin' an escape. A mass escape. You plan to empty this whole ruddy camp, don't ya?"

Hogan took a breath in and pushed it out through pursed lips, scanning the grounds. He shrugged after a moment and said, "Why not? I think it's about time we tried something new." 


	2. Crazy Is As Crazy Does

"That takes the bleedin' cake!"

"Newkirk…."

"And you've gone barmy, sir, for even ponderin' going along with it!"

"Peter."

"His son! His bloody son?"

"Corporal!"

Newkirk took a deep drag on his cigarette, glad that they were in Hogan's private quarters. The first pack he'd produced had drawn every eye in the main barracks until the Englander had given in to the guilt and passed the bundle around. Even the carton that the cigarettes came in had disappeared. By the time the nicotine worked its way through his system Newkirk was a little calmer, but no less baffled.

"You're tellin' me that Hochstetter faked a message through the underground, allowed a convent to be blown up, stranding seven 'elpless girls and killin' a ruddy priest. Nearly killed you, Kinch and Carter, then dragged you all the way to Austria…broke your bleedin' ribs…just to set free one lousy, junior kraut!?" Newkirk took another pull on the cigarette, pacing hard in the small space allotted, madder than he'd ever been before. He wasn't sure who he was angrier at, in that moment. Hogan or Hochstetter. "He's the bloody Gestapo, why can't he do it himself?!"

Hogan took in a breath then hesitated, giving his man a wary glance. To some degree Newkirk had every right to be angry. They'd been through a lot in the past few months, but the hardships weren't the problem. Usually it was all worth it if the end goal meant liberation for allied fliers, another part of the German war machine grinding to a screeching halt, or one more German official out of commission.

At the outset, Hochstetter's request seemed only to benefit Hochstetter.

"It's complicated." Hogan began, watching Newkirk rile himself up again for another onslaught. He cut him off angrily. "But when hasn't it been, Newkirk? War isn't black and white. We should know that better than anyone."

Newkirk stuck his cigarette in his mouth and finally perched on the edge of the roughhewn table that had been constructed precisely for the dimensions of the room, for the moment quiet.

"There are three points of view here, and at least two of them you're going to relate to."

"Really?" Newkirk said through his cigarette. "I can't wait to 'ear this."

"First keep in mind where I'm coming from. Hochstetter made it clear to me that if I didn't do what he said there'd be consequences beyond my control." Hogan hesitated, remembering the repeated threats against his men and the operation at Stalag 13. It hadn't just been his own batch of unsung heroes, but every POW in the camp, and probably anyone Hochstetter could find in the underground. "I couldn't risk saying no, even if I didn't have the resources to say yes.

"Then there's the Major's point of view. Hochstetter is very high up in the Gestapo ranks. He has a lot of attention on him at all times. He has to report every mile he travels; why, when and where. Everything he does could be reported back to Berlin and end either his career or his life."

"Great! Where do I sign up?"

"You don't! He's a smart guy. A smooth operator. He's gotten where he is because he knows how to play the game, and keep playing it. If he were with the Allies he'd be bucking for my job."

"'e may well get it, Colonel, you're gone crackers."

Hogan bristled at the insult and counted silently to five, then ten, refusing to jump on his man when provoked. Especially when Newkirk might have been right. The anger was creeping into his voice, but Hogan stuck to the topic. "Hochstetter's a father. He found out that his son had defected to Russia, and had been shot down and captured all on the same day. He's panicked. He has a lot of power, you're right, but only if he's seen as 100% loyal. And devoted Gestapo men don't use their influence to free Russian prisoners."

Newkirk stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette, shaking his head. "Why should we care about that? If Hochstetter's finally played out enough rope to 'ang himself, why should we stop 'im?"

Hogan leaned forward, putting his elbows on his thighs, and sighed. He rubbed his fingers over his forehead, feeling a headache coming on that might have had something to do with skipping his morning cup of coffee. He thought for a few minutes then said, "Look at the big picture, Newkirk. We have three options. One. We can leave things be, escape ourselves, and return to our posted duty stations in Germany where we're likely to be picked up again by the same Gestapo major, and probably be shot. In the meantime the men here will suffer."

Hogan waited for the idea to sink in then put up two fingers, "Or we can focus entirely on Private Caine, get him out, please Hochstettor and go back to Stalag 13, where the Gestapo man is just as likely to break up our operation with a double cross, and again, all the men here suffer."

"Or three…we break every man here out of the prison camp, make the major 'appy…"

"And…if we play it right, involve him in the operation so closely that he can't risk exposing us without exposing himself. He keeps our secret, maybe even becomes an ally. His son is free from imprisonment and we have half the German forces in Austria tied up for weeks looking for over two hundred escaped enemy POWs."

The room was silent again, the only noise the distant shouts and cheers of the men still at their football game in the yard.

"Option C…then." Newkirk said, resigning to the most impossible of the three plans in a way that felt very familiar.

Hogan stood and paced to the brand new window set in the wall of his quarters, turned to face Newkirk and leaned against the sill. "Good ol' reliable option C."

Newkirk thought for a minute, desperately itching for a cigarette, but trying to ration what he realized was going to be an even more precious commodity than usual. "Sir, you said there were three points of view."

Hogan winced slightly and nodded. "Private Caine. I had a conversation with him shortly after Hochstettor brought me back to camp." The Colonel paused a moment then said, "He says he doesn't have a father."

Newkirk's eyebrows shot up and he pursed his lips. "Is he an amnesiac or just doesn't like to admit he's related to the Gestapo."

"More likely the latter, or…Hochstettor's lying to us and wants Caine for another reason."

"Either way, you're going to go for it?"

Hogan shook his head, then twirled his pointer finger in a vague circle. "We're gonna go for it."

"Right…we're…gonna go for it." Newkirk said without any enthusiasm what so ever. The corporal stood shaking his head slowly, wishing he'd brought a fifth of scotch with him. "Can't tell you how it feels to be with you again, sir."

Hogan couldn't help but smirk a little, giving a non-committal shrug. "Don't worry, Newkirk, I think I know."

ooo000ooo

Two Days Later

"Are you sure you're up for this Carter?"

"I'll be fine, Louie! It's a piece of cake."

Corporal Louie LeBeau shook his head, not liking it one bit. Sending Newkirk out the day before hadn't been his favorite task either, but at least Newkirk had a passable accent, and reasonable acting skills.

Carter could blend, but only if he was sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd of sore thumbs.

"Look, just remember not to talk to any strangers." Kinch advised, making sure that Carter's pack was on tight, then brushing at the sleeves of the Hitler Youth uniform Newkirk had made before he left. Carter didn't really look like a teenager, but even the German army had to draw the line on who they allowed in the ranks. Hopefully Carter would look bumbling enough for the uniform and papers to make sense.

"Oui, and don't get off the train until you are in Austria. No side trips."

"Don't lose your compass." Kinch added.

"Or your map." LeBeau put in.

"Keep your shoes shined."

"And your hair combed."

"And-"

"Will you guys stop it, already?" Carter snapped, perturbed at the mothering routine. "I've done this sorta thing before you know."

Both Kinch and LeBeau stood back, looking Carter over from a distance, Kinch's hand resting on LeBeau's shoulder creating a homely look that reminded Carter a little of his folks back in the states. The thought brought a semi-smile to his lips and he straightened his spine a little. "I feel like this is my first day of school or somethin'."

A second later an air raid siren sounded, muffled by the walls of earth that formed the tunnel. The three men waiting near the emergency exit instinctively glanced upward before Carter started up the ladder.

"That is the school bell. Make sure you are not late." LeBeau said, patting Carter's pack for luck before the Sergeant was out of reach. Kinch headed for the oil lamp, dousing it before Carter opened the tree trunk exit.

The three POWs were immediately plunged into total darkness, lessened only a little as Carter swung the trunk top up on its hinges. The pitch black night outside was broken by the occasional sweep of the lights from the guard towers, and the volume of the air raid siren increased to a nerve wracking wail that made it impossible for Carter to hear anything else. He scanned the woods around the stump, confirmed that none of the guards had ventured out of the camp that night, and climbed the rest of the way out of the tunnel shaft.

Even though he knew that LeBeau and Kinch still waited below, Carter couldn't help suddenly feeling very alone. He almost got a sense of relief when he spotted the body of the first bomber high above. Their target might have been the railroad, or a bridge, or some factory that had slipped by the notice of the underground. Carter didn't know, but he felt connected somehow with the pilots and bombardiers, and grinned like a kid in a thundershower as he closed the stump and scampered off into the woods.

His grin started to slip, then fell completely when the third bomber to pass over the camp, too low and slow, exploded.

Carter had managed about half a mile in the moonless darkness before the fireball lit the sky, the plane exploding in three great booms, like sausage links loaded with black powder. On a rise that afforded him a view of the camp he stared in shock as debris began to rain in great chunks onto the hapless Stalag and the forest around it.

From a distance Carter watched the confusion. There were more sirens, dogs, shouts, fires. Propellers chewing into buildings, clawing through the barbed wire and diving into the ground. Chunks of burning wings and fuselage clattered and crumbled. Unexploded bombs that managed to fall from the plane intact, hit the ground and left craters. Only one of the eggs burst in camp but it was enough.

Carter couldn't move. He could barely breathe and he knew he was crying. He stumbled twenty feet back down the hill then skidded to a halt clinging to a tree trunk. Would the tunnel still be there? Could he even get back into camp that way?

He was dressed as a Hitler-Jugend. Mass confusion or no he couldn't very well stroll into camp through the front gates.

What would Colonel Hogan do if Carter didn't show up at the camp in Austria? What would he do if Carter did, and could only say he didn't know if the others had survived the horror of a plane crashing into the Stalag?

His heart was trying to tear itself out of his chest and he knew without a doubt that he couldn't walk away. He had to try. With a fleetness of foot that more than earned his Native American title, Carter covered the ground back to the tunnel entrance in a quarter of the time it had taken for him to get away.

The trunk lid had been blown open, probably as a result of pressure building underground, but there was no smoke coming from the tunnel. Carter clawed at the flashlight on his utility belt and pointed the powerful beam into the darkness, desperately searching through the dust hanging in the air.

The ladder was still firmly attached to the wall and the entrance itself looked clear. Carter scanned the forest around him then ducked into the shaft, vowing never to think about home again if it meant that LeBeau and Kinch were alright.


	3. Collapse

As soon as his feet hit dirt Carter whipped around and pointed his light down the tunnel. The first fifteen feet looked clear, the rest obscured by a haze of floating dust and a slight bend in the wall. The sound of secondary and tertiary explosions, guards shouting, dogs barking, sirens wailing, was all dampened by the thousands of tons of dirt above and around him but Carter still couldn't hear what he was hoping for.

"LeBeau! Kinch!?" He listened, his echo cutting off a little short, followed by the sound of some dirt falling and then nothing.

Carter skittered forward, flashing the light in a "Z" pattern that illuminated the ceiling beams, then the walls, then the floor over and over again. He spot checked every beam before stepping under it just in case this turned out to be the only way out of the tunnel.

"Louie! Kinchloe!" He shouted again, unable to avoid breathing in the dust that filled the tunnel, and desperately waving it away from his face.

The tunnel came to a bend and Carter headed to the left, toward the tunnel that led to the radio room and Barrack 2, certain that was the direction Louie and Kinch would have taken. Another explosion from above and the tunnel vibrated recklessly, dusting Carter's hat and uniform with small pebbles and fine granules of dirt. Carter focused the beam of his light on the ceiling and studied it closely as the shaking subsided and earth settled.

This time when he looked to the tunnel ahead he saw a flash of red wool.

"LeBeau!" He shouted, running towards the jumble of beams, dirt and Frenchman blocking the path. At first it looked as if the little Corporal was suspended in midair. Several feet off the floor, LeBeau was lying face down on what remained of some wooden packing crates that had been stored against one side of the tunnel. One of his gloved hands was visible, dangling over the edge of the crate, the other hidden under his torso. His head too was hanging down, but from the mid-chest back he was hidden behind beams, dirt and debris.

Carter checked the support beams that led up to the cave-in, gauging which were still solid, and which were likely to collapse if he started moving things around. Before he could've hoped to reach a decision about how to get his friend out, the Frenchman started to wake.

His head rolled around, then LeBeau groaned and tried to lift himself off the wooden box. That move brought a cry of pain and LeBeau freed his other hand in one jerk, bracing himself on the crate next to him, frantic to escape.

"Louie, calm down. Breathe."

"Carter…" The word came out desperate, rough and grating with pain as LeBeau struggled against the pressure on his torso and legs.

"Louie, stop movin'." Carter warned, putting his hands against the beam that lay overtop the cavity LeBeau was wedged into, feeling it shake every time the Frenchman pushed or pulled. "Cut it out, Louie!" Carter tried again feeling dirt shift, cascading faster and faster into the un-collapsed part of the tunnel. The dirt was likely the only thing keeping the beam from crushing his friend entirely.

Carter gave up on the heavy ceiling support and grabbed his friend's face in his hands, going to his knees and looking the man in the face, once more desperately pleading for him to hold still.

He was in pain. Panicking. He was claustrophobic, Carter remembered distantly. "You gotta calm down, Buddy. Or this whole thing is gonna come down on ya… I'm gonna get ya out but you gotta hold still, and you gotta breathe."

Lebeau took a few deeper breaths, feeling some of the panic wane, trying to push the rest back into the box it had escaped from. The pain wouldn't go away. Breathing deep made it worse. "'Hurts, Carter."

"I know, buddy, I know. I'm gonna get ya out, and we're gonna get you fixed up good as new." Carter could see the doubt in Louie's eyes, so he nodded his head firmly to finish the sentence, then stood and pointed the flashlight at the giant pick-up sticks. He didn't have a lot of time. That was the thing clearest to him as he studied the engineering problem of the century that one crashed plane had created.

ooo000ooo

"That's him. I found him! Hey guys, I found him!"

"Is he alive?"

A pause, then. "He's breathin'. Smacked his head pretty good, but he's breathin'."

"Don't move him." Sgt. Wilson called then darted down the tunnel, waving the three men with him to come forward.

"Good work, Johnson. Get the other guys and send them this way with the braces."

Johnson nodded, rising from his knees and letting Wilson, the closest thing to a doctor that they had, get into the spot he'd just pushed himself into. "What about Carter and LeBeau?"

Wilson didn't look up from the dark skinned, down-turned face, searching the staff sergeant's skull for the origin of the pool of blood collecting beneath him. "Nothin' we can do about either of 'em right now. Get the engineers in here on the double and brace this tunnel. If Kinch is here, the others may be, too."

"Right." Johnson confirmed then took off, calling for the half-dozen other prisoners in the tunnel system.

The men in Barracks 1 were made up almost entirely of corps engineers, and many of them had been in the camp longer than even Colonel Hogan, after they were captured while trying to make inroads into Italy. About the time the tunnel system was first being excavated, the engineers had started planning for the eventual collapse of those tunnels. What goes up, must come down, they all said like a regular credo. In preparation they had eventually rebuilt every bunk, table or chair in their barrack so that it could be quickly disassembled and reused as emergency bracing for the tunnels.

The minute they saw the plane come down half the men had gone to work in the tunnels, the other half pouring into the prison compound to put out the fires. It wasn't until after they'd gone underground that they were informed by the men in Barracks 2 that LeBeau, Kinch and Carter were supposed to have been in the emergency tunnel when the bomb hit.

Kinch had managed to get mostly clear of the cave in, but by mere feet. Wilson didn't want to think about the chances the other two might have had. Without moving Kinch's neck or back, Wilson checked his limbs for breaks or blood, getting the men with him to dig out the Sergeant's lower legs and feet.

Surrounded by piles of loose dirt, Wilson couldn't figure out at first what had hit the American sergeant hard enough to draw blood. The beams overhead had been jostled and the dirt around them shaken free, but nothing substantial had fallen. Then he noticed the smear of blood on the pillar behind where Kinchloe must have been standing and the loose lighting fixture still swinging slightly on its chord.

A group of engineers, loaded down with braces turned the corner as Wilson pieced together what must have happened and pulled a pen light from his pocket. "Must've seen that fixture coming down, and reacted. Probably got thrown into that beam." He said getting onto his belly, before he flashed the penlight into the one eye he had access to, pleased when the pupil reacted. Sluggish, but it was better than nothing.

The sudden burst of light in his retina got a secondary reaction out of the imposing staff sergeant and Wilson kept his hand on Kinch's neck, gently keeping the man's head as still as possible while he talked him back to the land of the living.

"Take it easy, Kinch. Slow and easy. There was a cave in, and you were knocked out. You need to keep still as possible for a bit."

Kinch moaned softly, his arms moving to brace himself on the floor and push up. A good sign. Wilson watched for his legs to move next, keeping up the quiet encouragement.

One booted foot jerked, then another and Kinch grunted, paling a little in the flashlight beam, and looking suddenly like he was going to be sick.

Wilson and his two makeshift medics were crowded around the wounded man. Four of the six engineers in the tunnel were squeezed into the same tight space as well, excavating and bracing as quickly as possible. There wasn't going to be much room for vomit, and Wilson was already cringing at what the next few hours were going be like if Kinch lost it, and he had to wear the man's puke.

"Take it easy, Sergeant. One of you men grab a bucket on the double!?"

"A bucket?" A voice echoed down the line, but Wilson ignored it, talking the sergeant through again.

"Are you dizzy?"

He got a grunt for a response, his hands still preventing their temporary leader from moving his head too much.

"Keep your eyes closed, deep breaths and wiggle your fingers for me, one at a time."

This time the grunt was a perturbed sound, almost as if the staff sergeant were berating him for expecting the impossible. "Come on. One at a time." Wilson urged again.

After a few seconds the wounded man did as he was told, turning all his concentration to the task of moving each finger individually, distracting his mind from the nausea.

The bucket came a few seconds before Wilson allowed Kinch to try to push to his knees, and couldn't have come sooner.

The engineers did what they could to ignore the unsettling sounds, digging, shoring up the tunnel and making headway as fast as they could toward where they hoped to find their other missing men.

ooo000ooo

It was like putting up a tent by yourself, Carter thought, digging like a terrier in the dirt on the opposite side of the tunnel. Peeling away layer by layer of rubble, he glanced up at the beam of light that wavered, but stayed trained on the ceiling.

Once you had one side of the canvas tacked down so that it wouldn't move, all you had to do was lift the ridgepole until it was leaning in the opposite direction of the planted tent pegs, tack down the other side, and wedge the ridge into place.

It was easier with two people, but he'd done it on his own a hundred times in the Boyscouts. A knowledge of leverage and a little creativity was all he needed.

"Doin' alright, Louie?" Carter asked, glancing briefly to the Frenchman he had managed to turn partially onto his side. The turn had created more room between Louie's chest and the beam and the trapped man now concentrated fully on breathing and holding the flashlight. Andrew got a breathy, pained, "Oui." From the man and considered the answer good enough for the time being.

One side of the fallen ceiling beam was still firmly anchored between the upright brace and the roof of the tunnel, and not likely to move. The other side was resting on dirt and debris and lowering in a steady, slow, 45 degree angle as Carter dug carefully around it.

If he went too fast the beam might tip, roll, or slip and fall… Carter had to make sure that the debris behind the beam was stable enough not to come crashing down on his own head, or Louie's. Then he had to get it solidly planted on the tunnel floor before he could even think about any of the rest of the rubble that he feared was cutting off the feeling in the Frenchman's legs.

"How's the pain?"

LeBeau's face was bathed in sweat, his skin more pale than usual, with high peaks of red on his cheeks that Carter didn't like. But he was breathing and still conscious. "Less." Louie responded, after what seemed like an eternity, then the light that was focused on the ceiling shuddered and the Frenchman added, "Cold."

The comment stopped Carter dead in his tracks and he stared at his friend, then scrambled to get out of the pack on his shoulders, ripped the rolled blanket from the top and shoved himself to his feet. As carefully as he possibly could Carter wrapped the blanket around LeBeau's shoulders, wishing once again that he had some way of supporting the Frenchman's head and neck.

A glance to the pack that he had forgotten about up until that moment made him silently berate himself and he hefted the sturdy canvas bag, pushing it against the crates. The top of the pack exceeded the height of the crates by about three inches. Carter nestled LeBeau's blanket-wrapped head against the new pillow and smirked a little when the Frenchman sighed in relief.

The sergeant went back to digging, hyper focused on the dirt and keeping it level, and almost missed LeBeau's voice in the near darkness.

"Sur le Pont…" Three French words, barely sung in a shadow of LeBeau's normally powerful baritone.

A couple more inches of dirt gone, the surface Carter was digging at started to feel more like packed floor.

"D'Avignon…" A three syllable word, again sung on all the same note, but a step higher.

Floor! Yes! Carter sparked a fierce grin as one corner of the four by four beam touched down, and he began to dig behind it, his arms burning, turning his eyes up to the illuminated spot on the ceiling. Dust had been raining down here and there, but no dirt, and no big chunks. It was going to hold.

"L'on y danse, l'on y danse." That phrase took a lot more breath, and left LeBeau gasping, but the tone of his voice had been stronger, and the melody rose and fell lyrically.

Carter stood, panting, reaching behind the sturdy beam and gently pushing against the other bits of debris, trying to see what would move and what wouldn't. A few things came loose. Dirt, scraps of wood, some dead wiring.

As he worked his way back to the trapped Frenchman he heard him repeat the first line in pieces.

"Sur le Pont."

Carter leaned carefully over LeBeau, probing gently around his trapped torso and legs, starting to get a good idea of what he would have to do to get the Frenchman free.

"D'avignon."

"The crates." Carter whispered, pulling free of the pile up and backing out, going to his knees to look at the boxes supporting his friend's frame.

He couldn't work up, and he couldn't work to the sides. Pulling debris out over top of LeBeau could be deadly, and excruciatingly painful for the injured man, but if he took out the crates. Broke them up somehow in one move.

"Louie."

"L'on y danse…"

"Louie…"

"Tous en rond."

What he wouldn't have given to have had the help of just one more person. Someone to hold LeBeau and pull him free once Carter had bashed the crate to pieces. Not for the first time Andrew felt the fierce concern, worry and determination flood through him, pushing out through his tear ducts. Knowing he had to make this work. Knowing he had to hurry. Knowing most of all that he didn't know anywhere near enough to get Louie free without screwing something up.

"Sur le Pont."

Louie wasn't giving up, Carter thought.

"D'avignon."

He couldn't give up either.

"L'on y danse…"

Carter thrust to his feet again and once more let his hands gently explore the debris directly pressing down against LeBeau. Wood, dirt, something metal that might have been a broken joint brace. He didn't feel any blood, but the minute his hands touched the wool of LeBeau's trousers the weak song broke off and was replaced by a quick yelp of pain. Alarmed, Carter pulled his hands away quickly.

LeBeau fought valiantly past the temptation to pass out, gradually finding his voice and finishing the second stanza through gritted teeth. "L'on y danse…"

"You felt that, Louie?" Carter asked, and the Frenchman didn't respond verbally, but met his eyes confirming what should have been obvious.

Feeling meant blood flow and working nerve endings. That meant some of Carter's digging had already released the pressure on Louie's legs, and that his back was probably still in one piece. He could do this. Maybe.

Andrew looked at the beam that now probably acted more as a dam holding back rubble, than an obstruction. He looked at the crate under the Frenchman, knocking scraped knuckles against its side, testing the strength of its construction. It'd held against the cave in, Carter thought, it wasn't going to be easy to bust.

But just like the tunnel itself every structure had a weak point. Carter catalogued what he had at his disposal and thought back to the few seconds that he'd had to explore the broken joint brace. Had it moved when he'd jerked his hand back? Would he be able to get it free?

Carter scraped a dirt crusted hand nervously across his mouth, then stepped forward resting the same hand lightly on the trapped man's shoulder. He squeezed gently, apologetically, and said, "Buddy, this next part is gonna hurt."


	4. Cave In

It took fifteen minutes to get Kinch up out of the tunnel and into Barracks 2. Wilson tried to force the Sergeant out into the compound where a triage area had been set up, but Kinch dragged his feet, using his considerable height to redirect the men helping him. He aimed for Colonel Hogan's quarters and Wilson and the man helping him didn't have a choice but to go with.

"You need medical attention, Sarge." Boquist said. The short private hadn't spent that much time in the medical corps before being assigned to a flight that landed him in the Stalag. He was mouthy for a private but Wilson liked his energy, and that he was quick learner.

"Can't go out there.." Kinch gasped, desperately holding onto what little remained in his lurching stomach as he aimed for the lower bunk. The second he lay down he shot back up again and Wilson dove in with the bucket, catching the miniscule bit of bile just in time.

"Water, Boquist." Wilson nodded and the private snatched Hogan's canteen from the bunk and brought it over. "Why can't you go out there?"

"…be questions." Kinch managed. "Can't explain…" He added, deciding that sitting up was better than lying down.

"Light, Boquist. We'll need hot water fast, and bandages." Wilson ordered next and Boquist responded immediately ducking out of the room. "I know what our standing orders are, Kinch, but a plane just crashed into the camp. Nobody's gonna have time to ask questions."

Sgt. Wilson was handed a pack of clean gauze seconds after the lamps were lit in the Colonel's quarters. Whether it was the nightly deprivation of electricity or the fault of the devastating crash, they didn't have any other source of illumination. Feeling like he'd signed up for the Civil War, Wilson held the flame as close to the staff sergeant's head as he could get it and worked at stopping the blood flow.

Kinch winced, drew in a sharp breath and fought the nausea. "LeBeau?"

"Don't know. The tunnel beyond where we found you is gone. The engineers are down there now workin' but there isn't even so much as a breeze gettin' through that cave in."

"Carter made it out, well before the…wait a minute." Kinch swept a hand over his head, knocking the medic's arms away from him and met Wilson's eyes with disbelief. "Did you say a plane crashed in camp?"

Wilson took a step back and straightened, discarding the bloody patch of gauze and grabbing another that he doused in iodine. "One of the bombers. Maybe they hit flack, maybe it had engine trouble. It exploded a few hundred feet over the camp and dropped some of its payload along with the debris."

Kinch stared at him in shock, his mouth hanging open, unable to respond in the face of the sheer randomness of the situation.

"Camp's goin' crazy out there, Kinch. Nobody's gonna question you comin' outta the barracks with a bloody skull."

"Not until LeBeau is out." Kinch said finally.

After a moment Wilson nodded, accepting the man's orders. He looked to the iodine soaked wad of bandages then said, "This is gonna hurt." seconds before he pressed the pad down on the still bleeding wound.

ooo000ooo

Carter had started singing too. He butchered the French, but he had picked up on the melody quickly and harmonized easily, swinging the joint brace in time with the beat. The corner of the crate facing away from the wall had been the easiest to notch. He'd had plenty of room to swing, and his hands had been whole then, if slicked with mud and sweat.

Now he had blood mixed in, and the irking pain from a cut across the palm of his hand, left there by the jagged sharp edges of the brace. Still he swung, singing the upper third to the simple chorus of the children's song until he had cut through the last few centimeters and he felt the crate start to sag.

One good blow in the center with his foot and the crate would crumble, some of the immovable force keeping Louie pinned would be gone and Carter could drag his friend free.

The American tossed the joint towards the exit end of the tunnel and supported the Frenchman's head and shoulders with one arm, pulling the bag out from under his head with the other and tossing it after the joint brace.

Louie had stopped singing, his face a tight ball of concentration and pain. It would only get worse from there on and they both knew it.

Carter bent at the knees, moving so that LeBeau's head and shoulders rested high on his chest, just under his chin. LeBeau stiffened, his teeth ground together and he tried to stifle the grunts that soon became shouts of pain. Andrew worked as fast as he could getting a solid grip on the man, trying to support as much of his torso and hips as possible.

He didn't give the Frenchman any warning. There was no point. It would either work, or it wouldn't. Giving a warning wouldn't make the pain any less.

Carter kicked at the box missing dead center the first time, and hitting it the second time with the wrong part of his foot. He grunted, ignored the pain shooting up his leg and kicked harder and faster, over and over again until he heard the wood splinter. It took one final kick to get the top to cave and then he pulled hard.

Louie screamed, clutching at his legs that popped free of their prison with the crate no longer blocking the way. Carter backed into the wall, desperately maintained his balance and changed his grip in one swift move, gathering LeBeau against his chest in a fireman's carry and taking off at a lope for the emergency tunnel exit.

Behind him he could hear the low rumble of a chain reaction cave in, but he ignored it. He had to get up the ladder. Up the ladder and out into the open and then back into camp somehow so that Wilson or somebody could make Louie better.

"Hang on." Carter said through a jaw clenched so tight he wasn't entirely sure he could open his mouth again. "Hang on." He pleaded, over and over. He managed to prop the Frenchman against one of the rungs of the ladder, then turned, pulled Louie's wrists around his neck and held them tightly. He lifted, turned and started up the ladder one handed.

He was a few feet off the ground before he felt Louie's arm muscles responding, tightening around his neck. The moment he was sure Louie wouldn't fall, Andrew let loose of the Frenchman's wrists and climbed the rest of the way up with both hands, scrambling out of the trunk and collapsing carefully onto his stomach in the cold grass, one arm flying back to wrap around LeBeau's waist.

For a few minutes Carter couldn't breathe. He heard the tunnel caving in on itself below, heard the floom of sound as dust under pressure burst out of the tunnel entrance. Then there was the distant sound of shouting, flames dying. A camp desperately trying to recover. He closed his eyes and listened until he heard Louie breathing, distressed to hear a rasping sound accompany every exhale.

His move must have punctured a lung, Carter thought. He knew he'd screw it up. Knew he'd do it wrong no matter how hard he tried. Louie was probably dying and all Carter could do was lie exhausted underneath his friend.

Then he realized that the rasping was in tune.

"Sur le pont…" He heard. "D'avignon."

Carter started to laugh weakly around gasps for breath, trying to stop because he knew that it had to be hurting his buddy, but at the same time very near the breaking point.

The singing stopped and Carter felt a hand patting his shoulder.

"You're…the best friend…a man…could have…" LeBeau managed between heavy breaths. "But your French…is still terrible."

Carter worked carefully to ease LeBeau to the ground, rising slowly and arranging the blanket around his wounded friend. The whole time he couldn't stop the grin on his face or the rotten French lyrics spilling out of his mouth.

ooo000ooo

From Hogan's quarters the cave in sounded and felt like an earthquake. Wilson and Kinch exchanged terrified glances before Kinchloe tried to get to his feet. Wilson tried to force him back down again but Kinch growled, "Help me get out there!"

The two men staggered into the barracks proper and watched as half the tunnel crew scrambled up the bunk ladder, followed by billows of dust. Over the crush of voices Kinch shouted, "Where's LeBeau?"

Each of the engineers shook their heads in dismay, fighting coughing spells and staggering to bunks or the benches around the table.

"What about the rest of the guys from Barrack 1?" Sgt. Wilson demanded next, guiding Kinch to his own bunk to finish the bandaging process he'd barely begun.

"Made it out the off ramp into our barracks." One of the men choked. "I hope."

With an agonized bark Kinch slammed his hand against one of the supports of his bunk, then tossed a pointed finger at the men and commanded, "Shut that entrance, now."

Seconds after the ladder and top mattress sluggishly slid into place, a concerned Sgt. Schultz burst through the door, frantically counting bodies.

The man carried a clip board with him and seemed caught between concern for the health of the prisoners, and fear that the incident in the yard might have encouraged a mass escape. The dirt covered men, the bloodied Kinchloe, and the looks of devastation on the faces of the rest of the POWs, halted the counting process halfway through.

He looked at the men around him, recognizing the faces of those that he had been missing from Barrack 1, but there were two junior officers still unaccounted for.

Hogan had been taken away by the Gestapo, a fevered Newkirk had wandered away from a work detail outside the wire not to be seen again, and now LeBeau and Carter were missing.

At least one of the guards was dead, several severely wounded, some of the prisoners had been injured when a propeller tore through their barrack and there was a gaping hole in the ground near the wire. Schultz's world was falling apart at the seams and he recognized the exhausted, vacant looks on the faces of the men in the barrack, even before he said the names of the two men that he feared might be dead.

"Carter?" He asked quietly, "LeBeau?"

Every man in the barrack looked around mutely before focusing on Kinchloe, and Schultz followed their gazes to study the wounded man. Kinch didn't look up. He stared hard at the floor and said nothing, until Schultz nodded solemnly, made two marks on his clipboard and left the barracks in silence.

A few minutes after Wilson finished with the bandage wound around his head Kinch pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and pointed at the trick bunk. "Open the tunnel."

"Kinch, there's noth-"

"I said, 'Open the tunnel'!" Kinch growled and one of the men from Barrack 1 stood and double tapped the catch.

The bunk mattress slid up, and the ladder down, the mechanism clanking hollowly. "Leave it open." Kinch said. "Everybody get back to your bunks and sack out. We start rebuildin' tomorrow."

The group was silent, the room still and uncomfortable as Sgt. Wilson helped Kinch back into the Colonel's quarters.

Outside the air raid sirens finally wound down and the first of three trucks bound for the hospital pulled out the front gates, swerving around one of many craters left outside the camp.


	5. Dieter Lechler

Corporal Dieter Lechler had just turned in for bed when the plane exploded. Asleep in the guard's barracks near the motor pool, he'd been jerked awake by the noise, then pressed into service putting out fires that got too near the camp's supply of fuel. The desperate sweep into action didn't stop there and Lechler, recently assigned to the camp, began to wonder if this sort of thing happened frequently. Every other guard in the place seemed to know exactly where to run for the water buckets, the sand, the blankets and emergency supplies.

He had thought that assignment to a POW camp in the middle of Germany would be safe, the easy life. Now suddenly Allied bombers were exploding and crashing in the camp.

Shortly after Lechler was assigned to drive one of the trucks to the local hospital he was even more surprised to have his vehicle, the last truck in the convoy, held up by a man in a stained Hitler Youth uniform.

At gun point Lechler was forced to carefully put a blanket wrapped child in the back of the truck then was ordered in accented German to continue driving the truck to the hospital as if nothing had happened.

He tried to talk to the young man, who seemed a might confused, and was clearly injured, but every effort was denied with a shouted, "Schweigen!"

Lechler finally lapsed into silence as requested and remained that way until they reached the hospital, the facility already overrun with casualties from the bombing raid. The Hitler Youth himself carried the unconscious child into the hospital and Lechler, no longer under the gun, helped unload the rest of the wounded.

The sergeant of the guard ordered Lechler to remain at the hospital, while the other two trucks returned to the camp. The stream of wounded didn't stop and the desperate hospital staff put the corporal to work doing menial tasks until the wee hours of the morning.

Just before day break Lechler poured two cups of thin coffee and brought them out to the crowded waiting room. He found the bowed head of a familiar figure and sat on the floor next to the young man who had held him briefly hostage. The Hitler Youth's hands had been bandaged since then, and his friend, not a child, but a very small man, had also been treated and laid on a thin mattress on the floor beside him.

"Hey…" Lechler said, not sure what to call the man. The blood and dirt smeared insignia on his uniform marked him as having the highest possible rank for a member of the Hitler Youth, but he hardly showed the initiative that such a cadet would have needed to gain it. "Did you lose your unit?"

The man lifted bleary, bloodshot eyes that bounced between Lechler's face and the extra cup of coffee in his hands. After a few seconds of consideration the man took the proffered steaming cup and sipped gingerly from it, careful of the thick bandages wrapped around his palms.

Lechler waited for an answer, curious, if not concerned.

"Will your friend be alright?" He asked to break the silence, gesturing slightly towards the unconscious man on the mat.

After a moment more of hesitation the uniformed man stuttered softly, "Yah, yah. He is good."

Lechler nodded and tried a smile that the tired man didn't return. He thought for a moment, looking toward the first rays of light coming through the windows. "I have a truck you know. I could drop you, wherever your unit is stationed."

The offer seemed to spark a response out of the young man who straightened a little and thought long and hard about the question. Finally the man smiled and said apologetically, "It is too far. But…thank you."

The response seemed a little bizarre, and it took Lechler a few minutes to get his sleep deprived brain in working order before he realized why. The uniformed youth had been on foot, clearly without transportation and less than a mile away from a POW camp. He must have carried the smaller man to the road. He had also felt the need to hold the prison guard at gunpoint for the entire trip to the hospital.

Deserters, Lechler thought, with a start. Or something else. Only the taller man had been in a uniform, the other buried in a mud covered blanket. He had assumed the smaller man to be a child at the time and hadn't questioned the identity of the Hitler Youth, but now...

Lechler began to feel his pulse speeding up, the coffee buzzing more rapidly through his system. He was desperately trying to think of a question that would quell his suspicions when one of the nurses, a beautiful blonde woman, bent to talk quietly to the man in the Hitler Youth uniform. Already a group of medics were moving the wounded, shorter man onto a stretcher, and the nurse helped the Hitler Youth to his feet.

Before Lechler could protest the sergeant of the guard from Stalag 13 barked from the door and Lechler jumped to his feet, responding with a hasty salute. He was ordered to return the truck to Stalag 13 and get some sack time as quickly as possible.

It wasn't until the following morning that he remembered the Hitler Youth, but by then there were other things to worry about.

ooo000ooo

Kommandant Klink's world was falling apart. His perfect no escape record had been marred by the English Corporal Newkirk's run for freedom. The senior POW officer had been arrested by the Gestapo, accused of espionage. Two more of his prisoners were now presumed dead following a failed air raid by the Allies and he was seven guards short.

The prisoners were restless, no longer sullen as they had been when Hogan was taken away, but now angry and demonstrative. A midnight escape attempt had taken the guards all morning to quell and at least one of his own men had been shot by a trigger happy private in the confusion.

Burkhalter had promised to bring a dozen new men with him when he came, but seemed not to care about the extenuating circumstances surrounding Klink's failure to control his own camp.

It didn't matter. Klink knew whose fault it truly was. And he knew what would fix it. He need only convince the general, and order would be restored.

The Kommandant's confidence flagged a little as he stood watching Burkhalter's car come through the gates followed by two trucks of soldiers. Each of the twelve fine examples of German manhood spilling out of the back of the trucks renewed his faith in the Fatherland, and in his own ability to control its prisoners until glory could be achieved. Klink felt a kinship with those men, soldiers all. He even thought he recognized one of the drivers.

Riding crop tucked deep into his armpit, Klink snapped a salute as Burkhalter maneuvered out of his car, and held his hand creased against his brow until the general impatiently returned the gesture, walking past the Kommandant and into his office.

Any confidence Klink had recovered deflated instantly like a balloon and he gave a withering glare to the familiar looking driver before he turned and followed his superior officer into the information center of the stalag.

"General Burkhalter, I hope you will take into consideration.." Klink began, the minute he stepped into his private office. Burkhalter had already seated himself at his desk, his desk, and looked expectantly at him in a way that warned that what the big man wanted was silence.

Klink pressed his lips together and snapped to attention.

"Sit, Klink. And listen."

"Yes, sir, sit and listen." Klink did just that, straining his back as he sat ramrod straight.

Burkhalter studied him carefully for a few minutes then leaned across the desk, his hands folded into a puffy ball. "It would seem, Colonel, that you are losing your grip here."

Klink desperately wanted to protest, and his whole body vibrated with a stifled response that didn't make it past his lips. Burkhalter waited for him to settle then continued.

"If I were a man given to studying statistics I would find it impossible that happenstance alone could be responsible for your recent…misfortunes."

Klink nodded, trying to smile, but his stomach was so sour that it his smile curdled on his lips.

"There are some in Berlin who view you as a military genius. To some extent, I must agree…that there is a genius in this camp. Or at least there was."

Klink bristled, confidence waning, rushing again to protest but using every ounce of control that he had left to remain quiet.

Burkhalter seemed surprised by his restraint and let his eyebrows rise before he continued. "It doesn't take an analyst to see what single event led to this catastrophic collapse. However, it is of greater value to Berlin to shut this camp down, than to try to fix it."

"Shut down…?" Klink finally blurted, unable to contain it.

"Given the state of the grounds, the guards, the prisoners. It would be easiest to move the POWs to separate camps and reassign your guards, than to try to create something out of nothing."

"But.."

"Klink! The only thing going for you at this moment is the inefficiency in the administration department in Berlin. They are slow to accept change, otherwise those trucks would have been empty, waiting to carry this camp to the dump!"

The starch ran out of Klink as the blood ran out of his face, but he thrust out his chin, desperately hanging on to the shreds of his dignity.

Burkhalter, while feeling some triumph at knowing that this bumbler would finally be out of his hair, still had orders. Superiors that he was expected to report to. Second, third and fourth chances that he had been ordered to give.

"You have four weeks."

"Four weeks?"

"To prove me wrong."

"P-prove…"

"In four weeks this camp must be returned to order. The buildings, the grounds, the prisoners. A model prison camp, Klink."

Wilhelm's smile started to return, hope superseding the impossibility of this second chance he was being given. "Thank you, sir! Your confidence in me is overwhelming, sir. I'll be requisitioning supplies immediately, sir."

"Don't bother."

"What?! B-but sir, you said that-"

"I said…that administration is slow. Lots of paperwork. You can hardly expect them to process requisitions when they are already overloaded with prisoner transfers. Therefore, you are on your own."

"But I…"

"I'm sure you have friends, Colonel. Favors that you can call in."

"But, sir, that's im-"

"Klink!" Burkhalter shouted, rising to his feet in an explosion that caused the thin Kommandant to jump out of his chair to rigid attention. "Everyday on the Russian front German officers are forced to do the impossible or lose their very lives!" The general roared, his face blood red. The big man's blood pressure had spiked, setting up a painful jab in his chest. His doctor's recent words of warning echoed in his ears and he forced deep breaths into his lungs until he had calmed. Klink was quaking in front of him and he could see that he'd made a lasting impression on the Kommandant. "If you can not make Stalag 13 a perfect model of German efficiency by the end of four weeks, it will be closed. Is that understood?"

Defeat in his eyes, colored by the last vestiges of Klink's failing survival instinct, the colonel dragged himself to attention and stiffened his arm in a salute. "Yes, sir." He responded, looking as though every ounce of his concentration was now focused entirely on maintaining attention.

For a few minutes Burkhalter felt like a bear. A violent, rabid bear, desperate to sate a ravenous hunger. He wondered if he had already gone mad, driven there by men like Klink and POWs like…no. Hogan was not an option. Hogan did not exist anymore. Hogan was dead to him and dead to the Fatherland.

"Very good." Burkhalter said, then left the office, giving Klink's secretary a smile that she did not return. Burkhalter ordered his drivers back into their trucks, then stepped into his vehicle and left the camp as hastily as he could, hoping that the four weeks would pass quickly.

The sooner Stalag 13 was shut down for good, the better.


	6. Imagine Meeting You Here

Two days. Carter was two days late and Hogan's one and only opportunity to contact the men of Stalag 13 had ended in failure. The means of communication was antiquated compared to the set up at the stalag, but he knew that the failure hadn't happened on his end. That left his imagination to run wild with torturous possibilities.

The question plaguing him now was, did he go ahead with the plan, or did he wait?

The excavation of a second tunnel from the officer's barracks to the existing route under the tool shed had nearly finished. His next connector tunnel would go straight to The Zoo but that project would be iffy at best if it started to snow, and the weather had been unreasonably wet, and unseasonably cold for the past few days.

In the time since Corporal Peter Newkirk arrived in camp, the Englander had already made a good deal of capital on a dozen card games, but all of his winnings were on paper. The purpose of the games had been to attract the participation of the guards and the corporal had managed to involve at least one of them before the commandant interrupted.

A small men's choir had begun in Barrack 3B, and the group had announced a show for which they had requested material to make costumes. The bolts of fabric that had been provided were intentionally flimsy; the commandant had no intention of providing them with the means of making civilian clothes. Hogan's purpose, however, had been to turn the men of Barrack 3B into tailors. With Newkirk's help their sewing skills were coming along nicely.

Hogan had resigned himself to improving his Russian, and forced Newkirk to sit through the lessons with him, since the cockney was supposed to be posing as a Ukrainian flyer.

The long parades around the camp and ongoing influx of food from the farm were putting the men in better and better shape.

Colonel Robert Hogan was sitting on a developing plan, like a hen on an egg; but could do nothing about it while he was stuck with endless hours of waiting and watching the tool shed and the camp entrance, hoping that either Carter or Hochstetter would show up.

The fact that he was relying at all on the Gestapo major made him queasy but in this case he didn't have a choice if he wanted information. And no news, was not good news. Not by a long shot.

"Colonel, you won't believe what those boys 'ad growin' inside Barracks 3B."

"Hold on a minute, Newkirk."

"I 'aven't seen this stuff since…well since it was banned in '28. They've got almost 'alf a pound of-."

"Newkirk…" Hogan gave his man a disapproving look that the Englander happily shrugged off, then jerked his chin toward the front gate. From his position on the hill in front of the officer's barracks Hogan could see the main drive leading up to the administration building. A black ambulance, flying Nazi flags and SS insignia had just rolled into camp.

"Looks like a hearse.." Newkirk mumbled softly, both men squinting as the driver stepped out and started directing the guards in front of the administration building toward the back of the vehicle.

"Doesn't make sense. Why would-" It took him a minute or two, then Hogan's hand flew up, latching onto the front of Newkirk's borrowed uniform and digging in.

He thought he was going to have a heart attack. Newkirk must have thought so too because he immediately braced his commanding officer with both hands.

"Colonel?"

"What in the blue blazes…!" After the shock wore off the anger grew, momentarily overwhelming his common sense and Hogan stormed down the hill, Newkirk following close behind. They were nearly to the deadline before Newkirk grabbed a handful of bomber jacket and yanked him back.

The guards had stiffened in the towers, alarmed at the unexpected action of the senior POW officer. Once the Englander had Hogan stopped he sent a friendly, disarming wave to the guards, trying to smile reassuringly.

"It's Carter!"

"What the bloody 'ell were you-?"

"It's….Car-ter." Hogan said, enunciating his consonants and shaking his head as he watched the Sergeant, turned Leutnant.

Dressed in an SS uniform, complete with black gloves that looked too big for him, Carter's voice carried easily over the distance as he snapped orders in clipped German. The two guards were emptying the back of the ambulance and Hogan squinted at the smaller than normal prisoner being carried toward the hospital. "And LeBeau…what are those guys tryin' to pull?"

The commandant appeared and papers changed hands, Carter was constantly saluting, forcing the commandant to do the same. The stretcher bearers had disappeared into the hospital and returned in record time, their hands once again empty.

Hogan fumed, deprived of the privilege of dressing down his men that very moment, men who apparently had nothing better to do than pull pranks.

"How many times do I have to say it? Don't pad your parts, and don't adlib!" Hogan snapped.

He made sure he caught Carter's eye when the 'Untersturmfuhrer' turned around to get back into the ambulance, and gave his head a sharp, stern shake. Carter responded with a solemn look of chagrin and the barest of nods before he got into the driver's seat and drove the ambulance to the camp motor pool.

Another hour passed before Carter gained access to the POW side of the camp, carrying orders to collect Hogan and deliver him to the hospital where he was to get acquainted with the new prisoner.

To the commandant of the camp the order had seemed bizarre, along with the transfer of the prisoner, and the officer that brought him, but the official papers were signed by a General Burkhalter, and Hochstetter. The latter name was so commonly entwined with all things bizarre that the commandant allowed the colonel entrance to the hospital without a second thought.

Hogan said nothing to Carter, treating him the way he would any Gestapo officer, with cold contempt and disapproval. The sergeant made no attempt to illicit a response, playing his part a little dull, but to the letter.

The doctor recognized the colonel and after a brief conversation and the receipt of some eggs and a few tomatoes that Hogan had smuggled in his coat, the doctor and his aids agreed to leave Hogan alone with the Gestapo man and the new prisoner.

When Hogan saw LeBeau the carefully kindled flame of anger was snuffed instantly. Robert felt like he'd been socked in the gut. The Frenchman was pale, bathed in sweat and still recovering from the excruciating pain caused by the move from the back of the ambulance. He probably hadn't seen a painkiller in over twenty-four hours, and Hogan knew he was even less likely to be given any here.

Carter looked like a whipped dog and had remained standing, his eyes downcast. A closer look at him told Hogan that the gloves weren't too big, but just the right size to fit over the bandages wrapped around Carter's hands. When Hogan lifted a hand to put it on Andrew's shoulder the man actually flinched.

"Carter…" Hogan said gently, "Sit down." Moving with him, the colonel sat on the cot next to LeBeau's, his hand remaining on the spot of tension between Andrew's shoulder and neck, until he felt the tendon relax.

"Colonel…" LeBeau was struggling to stay conscious, knowing that the colonel could only be fearing the worst, and would need a full report. "There was a cave-in at the camp, a-an explosion-"

"A bomber was shot down, sir." Carter offered, quietly filling in the blanks. "The plane and some of the bombs landed in the camp."

Hogan's hands tightened into fists, feeling as if a bomb had just been dropped on him. In his mind's eye he could see the camp in flames, the barracks torn to shreds, his men... The time he'd wasted…the instincts he should have listened to…

"I was trapped in the tunnel. Carter came back. Pulled me free."

"We did like you said, Colonel. They had me dressed up in that Hitler-Jugen outfit a-and I blew it."

"You got me to the hospital, Carter." Louie snapped with a little more fire, his voice thick with emotion and pain. "And the underground got us back out again."

"Tiger gave me a Wehrmacht uniform and I snuck back into camp and then Kinch-"

The name of his fourth man flooded Hogan with relief and he dropped his head, one hand clamping down on the edge of the cot he sat on. He nodded his head, his voice quaking a little as he said, "Kinch put you in an SS uniform and sent you and LeBeau here."

Hogan pulled his hat off and let it hang by his fingertips, burying his face in his other hand, struggling to sort out the onslaught of emotions. Chief among them were relief at knowing that all of his men were still alive, and overwhelming pride at what they had managed to accomplish against the odds, and completely on their own.

His hand went back to Carter's shoulder and he felt the sergeant fold, giving in to the stress a little himself. The move was hardly one that an American POW would make toward an agent of the Gestapo, but he didn't much care.

It took Hogan a few minutes to pull it together. There were questions that needed answers, and tasks that needed seeing to and Hogan hastily wiped at his face, risking a glance over his shoulder before he asked, "LeBeau, how bad is it?"

Clearly in agony, Louie bravely said, "Not bad, mon Colonel."

"Both of his legs are fractured." Carter muttered, staring now at his friend. "Couple of badly bruised ribs and…I dislocated his left shoulder gettin' him out."

LeBeau's face lightened a little with a gracious look of forgiveness that Carter missed. The Frenchman frankly was glad to be alive and not buried under several tons of dirt. They'd had this conversation a few times on the drive down but Carter hadn't yet forgiven himself.

"You saved his life, Carter. In every other circumstance you'd have a commendation and a furlough by now." Hogan said, his voice low enough that only Carter and LeBeau could hear.

Carter gave him an uncertain look but once more Hogan could feel the tension leaving his shoulders. "The orders that Kinchloe gave you, what do they say?"

"I'm assigned to this prison camp until further notice. My orders can only be changed by Hochstetter himself."

"I always planned to get a man into the Gestapo, but I guess it took Kinch to get the job done." Hogan thought for a moment, then said "The confusion at Stalag 13 must have been enough to explain you and LeBeau being missing."

The faces of both men fell, and Hogan could feel more bad news coming on like a winter cold.

"I got into camp pretending to be a driver for a troop truck that General Burkhalter ordered. He's given Klink four weeks to get everything ship shape or…he's gonna close down the camp."

Hogan sighed, closing his eyes and feeling something once firmly planted in his mind slip completely off its perch. Make it or break it, was the first thought to come to mind. Do or die. Empty two POW camps in one fell swoop, or empty one and rebuild another. "What about Crittendon, did they ever find him?"

Carter's mouth suddenly quirked in his awkward little smile and he shook his head. "After he escaped from that transfer truck he disappeared off the map, Colonel."

"Probably still lost in the middle of Germany somewhere." LeBeau moaned, unfavorably.

Hogan didn't know if having Crittendon at Stalag 13 would have been a blessing or a curse, but it was a moot point now. They hadn't heard anything about the British colonel or his botched transfer in months.

"The radio is out at camp?" Hogan said, waiting for confirmation even though he knew the answer.

Carter nodded, "Kinch had no way of letting London know what was goin' on."

"We're on our own."

Hogan barely had a few seconds warning, a rushed whisper from the doctor, before he heard the rapid staccato of jack boots on the hospital floor.

He shot to his feet even as Hochstetter shouted for the Leutnant to stand and report. Carter swept up into attention and saluted out of habit, but it didn't take long for the shorter officer to realize that this wasn't his man.

The surprise seemed to strike the short major speechless for a few minutes, and as his eyes bounced between the faces of the men gathered he said, "One of your men is now in the Gestapo, Hogan?"

Hochstetter strode closer, looking Carter's uniform over with a mix of disgust and surprise on his face. He gave Hogan a glance then stepped toward the Frenchman lying prone and in pain. Carter dropped the salute and fell back to put himself between the Gestapo man and Louie, earning another look from the major.

"You've brought three of your men here, if Klink's reports are to be believed. How many more must you have before you are done wasting my time?"

"I'm sorry, Major. I don't know what you're talking about." Hogan said, heatedly, caution keeping his voice just below full boil.

The major grit his teeth, and Hogan could see the father inside the carefully controlled man panicking. But Hochstetter thought about it and pulled back.

"It would seem that your old base of operations is in ruins, Colonel. By the hand of your allies, no less. Should I expect that you are…moving shop?"

"I think you'll find that the prisoner and the Leutnant were brought here on your orders, Hochstetter." Hogan said, resisting the urge to smirk. "Copies of those orders are now safely filed in the commandant's office. And you can ask the guards. They'll tell you that the population of the camp is accurate. No extra men."

The Major's face began to burn again. "Stealing official stationary, falsifying orders, forging signatures. You are a crook, Hogan, and a thief, and a spy!"

"And you're a murdering liar, but you don't see me holding that against you."

The accusation came as a surprise to the major but before he could question it, the doctor stepped within earshot. He was quiet about it, keeping his head down, but insistent that he have the major's attention.

"What do you want?"

"The men. They need their rest. Especially the Frenchman. If the major could carry on this conversation elsewhere." The request came quietly out of the doctor's mouth in German drawing the full attention of the Gestapo man. Hogan used the brief distraction to hand LeBeau a small cloth wrapped package, before he and Carter were ordered to follow Hochstetter.

Hogan nodded his thanks to the doctor as they left the hospital.

"You've been here three months, Hogan. In this amount of time you would have helped fifty men to escape at Stalag 13. What is your game?"

Hogan spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "I'm a prisoner in a POW labor camp, Major. I have no idea what you're talking about."

Hogan realized he'd stepped too far a second too late. A dangerous anger glinted in Hochstetter's eyes before he barked, "Leutnant, pull out your gun. Point it at this prisoner. He is trying to escape."

Carter paled, and glanced to Hogan but the colonel nodded quietly for him to do it. "Obey the major, Leutnant."

Swallowing hard Carter pulled the gun out and pointed it at Hogan, careful to keep the end of the muzzle away from anything vital.

"Cock it, Leutnant." Hochstetter said next, drawing his own weapon and holding it loosely in his hand, but so that the muzzle was pointed toward Carter.

"Do it, Carter." Hogan said softly.

"But, Colonel-!"

"Do it!"

Scared and nervous, Carter cocked the pistol, once more making absolutely certain that if it went off, it wasn't going to kill anyone.

"Very good, Leutnant." The Gestapo man praised, clenching his teeth tightly, beginning to look more and more like a time bomb. "Now…Hogan, I will ask again. Why are you wasting my time?"

Hogan knew Carter would do everything in his power not to shoot him. But he didn't trust Hochstetter not to shoot Carter. The point wasn't to shoot anybody, but was Major Hochstetter's way of reminding Hogan that the Gestapo man was still in control and Hogan was still a prisoner.

The American colonel had half a dozen aces up his sleeves that the major knew nothing about, but letting the little man believe he was in charge was advantageous for the moment. Hogan flattened his voice and said, "I was waiting for my second man to arrive. I'll need the two of them for the escape, and the trouble at Stalag 13 has delayed things. Having a man in the hospital is going to make it all the more difficult."

"I don't care to hear your excuses, Colonel-"

"And there's another thing." Hogan overrode the Major. Carter was starting to shake and looked like he might faint, and Hogan wasn't interested in giving up anymore ground than he had to. "A month ago I tried to get Private Caine to go under the wire and he wouldn't do it. He flat out refused."

Hochstetter's eyes snapped away from Carter to the colonel and the second he could, Carter lowered the pistol.

"What are you saying? Why…why would he do this?"

"Loyalty, for one thing." Hogan said, careful not to imply anything with the statement. "He won't go before the rest of his men."

"His men? He doesn't have men, he is a private."

"The enlisted men voted him as their representative. All 238 of 'em." Hogan said, and the major straightened a little. His face never changed but Hogan could feel pride filling the man.

"And...Caine says he won't leave until everyone has escaped."


	7. Plan? What plan?

"Have you even got a plan, sir?" Newkirk asked. His voice was soft but it still echoed against the concrete.

Hogan paced by him, agitated. He hadn't been in this room since the day Hochstetter ordered his men to break Hogan's rib. He could still feel a sympathetic jab in his side.

Newkirk seemed impervious, lounging in one of the straight back wooden chairs that had been set in the room when Hochstetter first brought them there.

Carter stood, still in SS uniform at the door to the room, shifting nervously and on occasion eyeing Private Caine.

Caine stood in front of his chair perfectly at attention, as if a newly minted soldier, despite the rags he was wearing.

"I've got too many plans, that's the problem." Hogan muttered, anxiously. If only he could have gotten word to London. It would rule out some schemes and cement others, but as far as he and his men were concerned London didn't exist.

"The men are coming along nicely with the sewing, sir." Newkirk sat up a bit, his voice suggesting that he was trying to be helpful. "They're good enough now to put together basic jackets and trousers if we had the proper material."

"What can they do with the stuff we were given?"

Newkirk smirked. "That's your basic parachute silk, sir. They could make wedding gowns."

Hogan sighed and rolled his eyes. "Alright, that's temporary plan A, a mass wedding."

They were waiting for Hochstetter who, after collecting the prisoners in the room, had left to see to other matters. Or, more likely, had left to let Hogan stew.

"There's enough there to make another hot air balloon." Newkirk suggested, fairly certain the idea wasn't one of those that Hogan would snatch up. But he also knew his CO's brainstorming ability. One off-the-wall, batty idea might not work, but it could trigger a different one that would.

Hogan's shoes scraped on the concrete a few more steps, before he stopped, his eyes casting downward as he turned slightly to face Newkirk. He was still for a few moments during which Newkirk and Carter leaned forward, ready for the latest and greatest.

All Hogan said in response was, "Huh…"

The door opened a few minutes later and when Hochstetter entered the room Hogan saw Caine shudder. Recognition. So Caine had been lying about his father.

There were three other soldiers behind Hochstetter but the major ordered them to remain outside. Once they saw that Carter was there to 'defend' the major against the violent prisoners, they nodded to the order and shut the door.

The Gestapo man stood where he was for a few seconds surveying the group, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. The sight was so powerful a moment of de ja vue that Hogan felt himself flush. Old fear, anger, denial and hatred scorched through his insides in an instant, putting him back in the place he had been in when he first arrived at the camp.

He gritted his teeth together and looked away from Hochstetter, watching his man Carter until the unexpected flood dissipated. Newkirk caught the reaction and rose to his feet moving a step closer to the colonel but saying nothing.

Hochstetter composed himself then stood in front of Private Caine, demanding to know his name.

"Private Caine of the People's Army." The young man replied, stubbornly, in Russian.

"Speak in German!" Hochstetter demanded.

Caine's response was to give his personal identification number and repeat his name and rank, still in Russian.

Before he could finish Hochstetter demanded again, "You will answer in the German language. What is your full name?"

Caine started over, name, rank, personal identification number. Before he could finish Hochstetter's hand flew up, striking Caine's cheek hard enough for the slap to echo in the room.

Caine went silent, his face blooming beet red. Newkirk and Carter saw it at the same time. A familiar look that both of them had had on their faces at one point or another in their lives. The look that all men saw in the mirror after they'd been slapped by a parent for disrespect.

They saw it in Hochstetter too. This wasn't Gestapo man and prisoner, this was father and son. Newkirk had seen it coming, but Carter hadn't, and he started away from his position on the wall with a look of realization dawning on his face.

Major Hochstetter caught the movement in the corner of his eye and snapped for the Leutnant to come to attention. Carter stiffened, his eyes seeking out Hogan's, asking the question silently that he hadn't been allowed to ask out loud.

Hochstetter dug into a pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers that he opened and made a play at reading before he said, "Your name is Wolfgang Caine Hochstetter. You were studying to be an aero-engineer at the TH Aachen Polytechnikum in the North Rhine until September of 1935 when you…" Hochstetter's voice faltered, and he swallowed before continuing, "…disappeared without a trace. Do you deny this?"

The angry flush to Caine's face had remained, joined now by the slick of angry tears. He said nothing, staring straight ahead.

"And now you have been shot down and captured wearing a Russian uniform, serving in the Russian air force. Why!?" Hochstetter demanded, forcing every ounce of anger and frustration into the single word. The power behind it made Caine, and every other man in the room jump.

As the major paced away, Hogan watched the private until he caught the sideways glance of desperation. "Hochstetter, he's given you every answer he's required to give."

"Don't you dare presume to quote the Geneva Convention to me, Hogan." Hochstetter barked, filling his lungs with a hot mix of outrage that he turned toward his son. "You will answer my question, no more stalling."

Caine's eyes dug into his father's, desperately searching for acknowledgement of something that the private clearly thought Hochstetter should have already known. He gave a second desperate glance to the ranking officer in the room and Hogan finally understood what the young man wanted.

Permission to speak freely.

Hogan gave him a nod and Caine snapped his attention back to Hochstetter like a bloodhound finally released to hunt. He began to speak in German, rapid fire responses that Hogan barely caught.

"I was born in a country of greatness, to parents in whom I could be proud. A country that cared for all of its citizens, and looked to a bright future full of invention, wealth and harmony. That is the country to which I remain loyal. But it is not today's Germany."

"Silly ideals, flimsy excuses, fluff and decadence. These are your reasons for betrayal?"

"Equality of ideas, excuses of humanity. This is not decadence-"

"It is treason!"

"For Wolfgang Hochstetter, yes. For Private Caine, no." Caine said firmly, once more staring at the wall above the major.

Hochstetter turned away sharply, grunting in frustration and putting distance between himself and his son. The room had begun to heat up rapidly and Hogan was grateful for the brief pause, catching a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

The interrogation had been Hogan's idea; a suggestion that he'd meant as a positive way of reuniting father and son, but it wasn't going that way.

"And what of Liesel?" The Gestapo man said after a moment of thought. He turned and eyed the young man, hands on his hips. "She was left to mourn her fiancé, with no word from him. No understanding of why he disappeared. She pines still. Does Wolfgang Hochstetter care that he betrayed her along with his country? How about Private Caine?"

The young private didn't answer, stiffening his back and staring over Hochstetter's shoulder. But the creases of doubt and guilt were easy to see on his young face.

"Yah, poor Leisel. And Frieda, Wolfgang's sister. How she adored her older brother, and wept at his disappearance. She could no longer bear to attend the gymnasium and stayed home with her mother to serve the Fatherland."

The final statement broke through the shield and Caine's full attention fell on his father, turned enemy. His eyes were softening as he stared at a man that he had betrayed, knowing that he was being betrayed in return. For his part, Hochstetter appeared entirely unmoved beyond the boiling anger that he carried with him everywhere.

"You may not care for your country, but do you care for your countrymen?" Hochstetter demanded.

The flicker that Hogan saw in Caine's eyes clued him in to the shift in the conversation that was about to take place, but there was nothing he could do to head it off. The balance of the interrogation had changed and Caine suddenly held the high ground.

"1933, September." He began, slow and steady. "My second year at the polytechnikum. Professor Levi Shapiro, a loyal countryman, a man who had patents for fifteen different types of aero elevators, two of which were in use by the Luftwaffe at that time, was excommunicated from the university. He was accused of inappropriate behavior with female students, but there were no female students enrolled."

"That is enough." Hochstetter said, but Caine wasn't finished and didn't pause a beat.

"1933, December. Doctor Abraham Atshool, an unparalleled genius in mathematics, born in Berlin. His home was burned by a gang of students, one of his children horribly injured by the fire. He was released from the university for taking an "unauthorized extended leave.""

"That is enough, private-"

"1934, January. An investigation into the sudden dip in student population revealed that fifty students had been flunked from the university for low academic standards. All of these students had two things in common. They were native Germans, and they were Jews."

"Silence!"

"Jews! And students who openly objected to the political leanings of the government."

"Caine Hochstetter!"

Private Caine stiffened and snapped his mouth shut and Hogan and his men got another brief glimpse at the human being behind the Gestapo monster. Hochstetter pulled back desperately, and physically turned away from his son.

"You disappear, defect, and join the Russian army in defiance of your family, your culture, and your heritage. If my superiors were made aware of this information I could be shot as a traitor, you would be shot as traitor. Your mother and sister would be exiled, or forced into a camp just like this one. Is this what you intended?"

Caine didn't respond and Hochstetter took a breath.

"And all for what? For some high-minded ideal? Because some of your friends and professors were let go?"

Caine's mouth was pressed so tightly shut now, that his lips were turning white. He was so stiff in the knees, that Hogan was afraid he'd pass out if he didn't relax his stance. Without thinking about protocol, Hogan ordered Caine to 'at ease', and after giving him a surprised glance, the private did as he was told.

Hochstetter sent a glare toward the Colonel but was interrupted before he could protest.

"I really thought you were smarter than that, Hochstetter." Hogan said quietly.

Things had gone very awry. The point had been to mend fences between Hochstetter and Caine, to get the two on the same side, and maybe convince Hochstetter to do more, risk more, to get his son out of the prison camp. Instead the rift had gotten wider.

"…but then you're in the Gestapo, a top hound-dog for the Fuhrer, so why should I keep fooling myself." Hogan continued, trying to sound aloof. His attempt to awaken the family man in Hochstetter had failed miserably.

Maybe Hogan could poke at the sleeping rebel that was so apparent in Hochstetter's son. The major wasn't a pushover like Klink. He didn't cower when someone with higher rank walked into the room as long as he was convinced of his duty and purpose. Hogan had to see just how loyal Hochstetter really was.

"Only an idiot would go along with the madness that Hitler's been dishing out for the past ten years. It's bad enough for the rest of us. We may have seen it coming but we kept our heads in the sand, tried to stay out of it. But you…you jumped in on the ground level. How long have you been in the Gestapo, Major? From the beginning, or did you join after your son jumped ship? Was your plan all along to track him down, or did you chicken out of the other services and this was all that was left?"

He was grasping at straws, desperately trying to decipher the history of a man that he'd been trying to avoid for the longest time. He was getting a rise out of Hochstetter, though, so he kept it up.

Hogan jabbed a thumb toward Private Caine and said, "You know he's probably the smartest German I've met yet. He got out and joined the good guys. Probably figured it was best to leave ol' bubble head with the rest of the yutzes and join a team that was gonna win. How many wars have you lost so far?"

"Shut up…"

"No way! I like this kid! He's got guts. And it can't have come from his father's side. Must be his mother's. You did say your mother was born in Russia, didn't you, Caine?" Hogan asked, not expecting a response from the private who had gone even paler than before.

"You will shut up or there will be consequences, Hogan. Remember, you are a prisoner here."

"So are you, Hoch-y ol' boy. No matter how hard you push, you can't get your kid outta this camp, can ya? Not without risking your precious job. You spent how many months desperately trying to catch the amazing Papa Bear in a compromising position? And look at the lengths you went to. But instead of being smart and taking me straight to Berlin where you can make yourself a general and live the easy life, you bring me here! Then you threaten to kill my men unless I break your kid outta jail. You're trapped by guilt and remorse, and desperate to keep your job at the same time. Well you can't have everything, Major! War isn't fair."

Every man in the room but Hochstetter and Hogan snapped their surprised faces toward the Colonel. In one outburst Hogan had revealed a dozen details that each had been missing, and Caine especially looked mortified.

After a long, red-faced stare-down Hochstetter said, "No…war is not fair." Without warning the small man pulled his gun and shot Newkirk.

The room exploded with the noise from the gun shot, Newkirk's surprised shouts, and Carter and Hogan desperately getting in between the Gestapo man and the Englander.

Hogan was able to catch Newkirk's shoulders before he hit the ground and Carter found the bullet hole, neatly drilled through, high on Peter's calf, and pushed down hard against it. Newkirk paled, sweat breaking out over his brow, gritted his teeth and latched a hand onto Carter's forearm, digging his fingers in against the pain.

Once Carter gave him a nod, Hogan rose to his feet, his voice going up in pitch. "What the HELL do you think you're doing, Hochstetter?"

Before the major could respond four SS guards were bursting through the door demanding to know what was going on. Guns were pointed everywhere and Hogan lost sight of Caine for a split second. Then he heard the cocking of a rifle and looked up to see the private standing between himself and Hochstetter. Caine had picked up Andrew's rifle and had it pointed at the sergeant's head. Carter was ghost white.

"I will shoot this man!" Caine warned, eyeing the Gestapo major and the SS guards, shaking so much that the barrel of the rifle rattled.

Hochstetter smiled and said, "Go ahead. It will only be one more imposter taken out of action."

The barrel lowered, Caine registering surprise and confusion. Carter moved, throwing his shoulder into Caine's legs, throwing him off balance. The rest of the guards stormed into the room, grabbing Caine and tearing the gun from his hands.

Carter recovered the gun, the other guards assuming he was one of theirs, but Hochstetter had his pistol trained on him.

The small man's voice was suddenly cold and distant. "Hogan, you've convinced me. I did make a mistake. Like you, I've tried to be two things at once. A foolish endeavor that has gotten me nowhere."

"Bloody, stinking kraut." Newkirk squeaked. "You'd shoot your own flesh and blood if it'd get you a promotion."

Instead of hushing Newkirk, Hogan stood and blocked his men with his body, using one hand to shove Carter back to his knees. He heard a stifled groan from Newkirk and assumed that Carter was once again putting pressure on the bleeding wound.

"No, Corporal. I know exactly what will get me the promotion. And you can thank your colonel for making the possibility all the more certain."

Hogan felt a chill go down his spine that threatened to empty his stomach and his bladder all at the same time.

"Take these men to the hospital and see that the corporal is patched up. Then I want all of them in an ambulance, along with the Frenchman. They will be transported to Berlin."

The sergeant was staring at Carter in confusion and doubt, but snapped a salute and ordered the others with him to pick up the Englander.

"Sergeant.." Hochstetter called the guard, gazing briefly at this son as if he were looking at a broken down car he was thinking about selling. "If these men do not arrive in Berlin…there will be no transfer to the Russian front. You will be hung. Understood?"

After he received his salute Major Hochstetter left and Hogan swore under his breath. The major had managed it on his own after all. He was getting his son transferred out of the camp and sent back to Germany along with Papa Bear and most of his men.

"Was that part of your bloody plan, Colonel?" Newkirk bit out, angrily glaring at his CO before he was forced roughly to his feet. The move put pressure on his leg and he blanched, clinging to the two soldiers supporting him, desperate not to pass out.


	8. Back Across The Border

"That wasn't part of your plan…was it, Colonel?"

Hogan pulled himself briefly out of a haze of desperate plotting and looked to Carter. The sergeant sat at one end of the bench seat in the back of the ambulance truck, LeBeau's head cradled in his lap. The move from the hospital to the truck had done the Frenchman in, even with the painkilling aid of the marijuana Hogan had slipped him earlier. LeBeau had been unconscious for the past hour. It was just as well. The driver wasn't sparing them any of the bumps in the road.

Solemnly Hogan said, "No, Carter. It wasn't part of my plan."

"Blimey, what a relief. Here I was, afraid that Hogan had it out for me, and asked Hochstetter to shoot me on purpose."

Carter sent a weary, disappointed glance Newkirk's way. The Englander was focused on bracing himself against the jouncing of the truck. The wounded man had been laid out on a canvas stretcher on the thin wooden floor, but the jolting ride had prompted him to try to get up on the bench seat. The moment Hogan offered to help him, Newkirk had jerked his arm free of the CO's grasp and resolved to lay on the canvas, no matter the discomfort.

"What will he do with us? My father?" Caine asked, seated on the bench beside Hogan.

"The four of us, interrogation and execution." Hogan said, meeting Carter's startled glance. There were a hundred other things that could happen to them in Berlin, and most of them would be worse than a mere questioning followed by death. He didn't like to think about the possibilities.

After a moment of thought, Carter bravely said, "He won't get anything outta us, Colonel."

"I know that, Andrew." The American officer pulled his arms against his chest a little tighter. "As for what he wants out of Private Caine.." Hogan considered the young German seated next to him then shook his head. "He wanted you out of that camp, and now he's got you."

"I may see my mother and sister again…" Caine said, dreamily, sounding as if he enjoyed the idea.

"Charming, bloody charming." Newkirk groused, grunting in pain.

Hogan spared the man a glance but let him complain. He'd be just as furious if one of his men had gone too far and gotten him shot. For the moment he was grateful that Newkirk was still alive, and likely to recover.

"What about the other POWs, Colonel?" Caine asked.

Immediately Hogan thought of the men he'd left behind in Stalag 13, but he knew that Caine was referring to Gusen.

"They've got a great escape route set up. If they're smart about it they can empty the camp a few men at a time and be gone by next spring."

"And if the SS find the tunnels?"

Hogan thought about it for a few minutes, then said. "They're better off now than they were."

"Some of them anyway…"

"Alright, Newkirk, that's enough. You're welcome to hate me all you like, but do it in quiet, and that's an order. You're gonna need what little sleep you can get, you might as well try to get some now."

"In this ruddy cracker box?" Newkirk snapped, then fell silent and pale when they hit a deep bump.

The jolt gave Hogan an idea and he twisted suddenly on the bench seat, then rose to a crouch and made his way to the rear of the truck.

Hochstetter had ordered two cars to accompany the ambulance. One in front, and one in back. The guards were ordered to shoot any prisoner that tried to make a break for it, which narrowed the field of options dramatically. They'd been searched twice before they left Gusen, but if Hogan knew Newkirk, the man still had something on him.

Turning to the corporal he said, "You're mad at me, right, Newkirk?"

The look of hot fury that the Englander gave him was just what he wanted to see. "Right-o, Gov." Newkirk bit out.

"You got anything sharp on ya?" Hogan asked. Newkirk gave him a shocked look that was quickly replaced by anger and nodded.

"Stole a scalpel from that hack surgeon in the camp hospital, why?"

"Give it to me. You're gonna start a fight, and I'm gonna pop some tires. See if we can't get a decent night's rest before we get to Berlin."

Newkirk could hardly hand over the scalpel fast enough. The minute Hogan had it hidden safely away Newkirk launched a right uppercut that lifted Hogan up, and rang his bell. A second punch across the brow had the Englander shaking his fist and Hogan flying out of the back of the truck, right into the path of the oncoming car.

Hogan hit the dirt and rolled desperately for the side of the road, his head ringing from the punches. The road didn't hurt as much as the full force of Newkirk's anger, but it still did plenty of damage. The SS car veered out of the way, its horn honking loudly to get the ambulance truck to stop. Hogan struggled to regain his senses and finally managed to push to his feet. Stumbling to the back of the stopped SS car, he stabbed the two rear tires as quickly as he could before the dizziness took over and he was on his hands and knees again.

Carter was at the back of the truck screaming in German that the guards shouldn't shoot, that Hogan had fallen out of the truck on accident. The guards seemed more terrified that they might have lost the one prisoner Hochstetter insisted be kept alive.

They dragged Hogan to his feet, marching him toward the truck as the guards from the other two vehicles joined them, demanding to know what was going on. The pandemonium continued when Hogan let his knees go out, a few feet from the tailgate of the ambulance. The guards were dragged down, not expecting the sudden weight, and Hogan got at least one of the tires on the truck before the tailgate was lowered and he felt Carter and Newkirk dragging him back into the bay.

The guards snapped harsh warnings that another 'accident' wouldn't be tolerated, then eagerly jumped back into their vehicles as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

The men in the truck heard a single pop a mile later, then the other two compromised tires went and the vehicles once more ground to a halt.

Bloodied and bruised by the fall, Hogan managed a slight grin that he hid as the SS goons gathered to try to figure out their latest problem. Newkirk was calmer, and even flashed a smirk at Carter, nursing his bruised knuckles. They waited on the road about a half hour before the decision was made to try and get the truck to the nearest boarding house for the night where the tire, and bent rim, could be repaired.

The tail car would be left on the side of the road until it could be retrieved come morning. The snow continued to fall, the truck inching along until they saw the lights of the border up ahead.

In an hour the prisoners were back in Germany. Escorted to an inn along the main road they were given a double bed suite, and offered a medical kit (emptied of all sharp objects of course) and a dinner of soup, bread and tea from the hotel kitchen.

It took some doing to convince the guard that he needn't watch from inside the room, but they managed. They were warned that the guard would check on them whenever he felt the need, however, and reminded that any attempt at escape would result in death.

LeBeau was awake enough to drink some of the soup and chew on a few wedges of bread before he fell fast asleep. The men covered him with every extra blanket in the room and pushed the bed close to the heater, before they settled Newkirk on the other side of it.

The bandage-changing process involved a lot of griping on Newkirk's part, and lot of apologizing on Nurse Carter's part, but the bantering was a sign of normalcy between the two and Hogan listened to it quietly, eating his meal.

The exhaustion that Newkirk had been ignoring for hours hit him like a ton of bricks and he passed out, halfway through his bowl of soup. Carter and Hogan carefully put him to bed, burying him under the blankets.

While Carter went to eat his own meal, sitting in quiet conversation with Private Caine, Hogan pulled a chair up near the 'sick' bed and sat down with a soft groan.

He ached all over, and his face was swollen from Newkirk's punches. He'd been scraped up by his fall and sliced at least once because of his careless stabs at the tires. He felt old. Watching two of his wounded men sleep, he felt useless too.

From the start he'd made all the wrong calls. Going too far from Stalag 13 to take care of a sweet little target that turned out to be a convent. He and his men had barely scaled the stone walls before the place blew up, and in swept the Gestapo, managing to take him hostage. In the meantime Kinchloe and Carter had been stranded in the middle of Germany without a prayer, and if it hadn't been for LeBeau and Newkirk, they'd still be missing-in-action.

Hogan had been carted off to Austria and once he managed to get in contact with his men he'd ordered Carter and Newkirk out.

Now all four of his men had been injured, Stalag 13 was falling apart, he'd just abandoned another 200+ men in Gusen and the four of them were headed to Berlin…Nazi-hell home base.

He shook his head at himself. It was unbelievable the scope of trouble that he managed to drag himself and those around him into.

Klink had once told him that he was bad luck.

"You don't know how right you were, Kommandant." Hogan said softly, glancing over his shoulder to find that Caine and Carter were both sprawled across the remaining bed, unconscious. Hogan stood and pulled the blankets over them both then moved to the window to watch the snow fall.

The first snow of the winter. Like the first day of fall, this used to be a milestone that he marked with fondness every year.

One 'first snow' was also his first time with a woman. Well…girl. She'd been sixteen, and he'd been fourteen.

Then there was the 'first snow' when Uncle Rob took him out for his first drink. They'd ended up closing the pub and doing donuts in the parking lot, and if it weren't for Uncle Rob's connections with the local constabulary he'd have also had his first night in jail. He'd been seventeen, no, eighteen. That was right. The occasion had been his receipt of his private pilot's license.

His first 'first snow' overseas had been in London. The town had been alive and bright for once with the clearing chill in the air, and then a giant flaked flurry moved in that buried everything, making the city look like a post card. He'd been with Rita then…or was it Julie? They'd stood so long kissing outside her apartment that he had inches of snow peaked on his cap by the time she pulled him inside. He remembered the cold chill of melting snow going down his spine in the sudden heat of her apartment.

Then the 'first snow' at Stalag 13. A blizzard, temperature diving down to 10 below and he had his men in the tunnel digging to the rec hall where the German's were storing the coal reserve. They'd built a dozen walls of snow over the displaced dirt claiming that the snow helped to insulate the buildings. In a way it had. They'd barely survived that first blizzard with how little they had in the way of clothing and blankets.

At least one of the Luftwaffe guards had frozen to death at his post.

Hogan didn't sleep that night in the inn. Their guard got used to the fact that the colonel wasn't going to join his men in slumber, and by 0330 he'd stopped looking in on them. The snow was thick outside, and still falling, making the idea of escape laughable. Hogan was exhausted and figured the guards had to be as well. They should have been in Berlin hours ago, but the snow and the busted tires made that impossible.

They would have to figure out transport for the prisoners in the morning, which meant another long day ahead.

Tired guards…Hogan looked out the window again, then snuck to the door and cracked it open enough so that he could see the hall. Their guard was asleep, sitting on a stool against the wall opposite their door, his gun leaned against his shoulder.

The American glanced back into the room, looking over the four men asleep under piles of blankets, made his decision, then snuck out into the hall. Other than the single man stationed in front of their room the rest of the guards were nowhere in sight.

Hogan started down the hall, walking lightly on his toes and got to the end of the narrow carpeted walkway before he intentionally knocked his heel against the molding. The sound woke the guard and Hogan stole around the corner just as he looked up.

The guard jumped to his feet and started shouting and Hogan took off at a dead run down the adjoining hall and toward the stairs. His knees protested and his tired body resisted, but he forced his muscles into action and tore down the stairs into the lobby of the hotel.

The guards would know better, hopefully, than to start shooting where their bullets might accidentally hit German citizens. The hotel was smack in the middle of the city of Passau, surrounded by other hotels and boarding houses. The SS shooting up the town at three in the morning would go over badly for an already disliked secret police. Hogan really hoped the guards would think about that. He left the hotel through a side exit, plunged into the snow and went flying. Head over heels, flipping through the snow until he hit a line of bushes. He picked himself up, covered in wet white stuff, and bruised all the more.

The guards were behind him. Slow to step into their uniforms and grab their guns. Not too happy about being roused from warm beds to chase after a prisoner in the snow. But cold and wet was better than hanged to death for failing Major Hochstetter.

They were slow but they were coming and Hogan's only idea had been to keep the guards busy, keep them from sleeping, and maybe gain an edge before morning. The only problem with trying to disappear was the snow. Fresh, untouched, and a foot and a half deep, tracking him down wasn't going to be a problem.

His hands were already beet red and burning, unprotected against the snow. Hogan jerked his hat down hard on his head and headed for the road, jumping into a solid line of packed snow caused by a single vehicle braving the road at that hour.

He dug his heels in and ran, grateful for black out conditions, even on a blizzardy morning.


	9. Because Passau Is Lovely This Time Of Year

Three rivers meet in Passau; The Danube, The Ilz, and The Inn. Whenever cold air invades the city, the streets are blanketed in fog. That is, until the rivers freeze. Then the air is cold and clear, providing next to nothing in the way of cover for an escaping prisoner of war.

Hogan kept out of sight as best he could anyway, jogging over the road and through a corridor that ran between two residential buildings, then up another alley filled with snow. He fell frequently, and was soaked to the bone by the time he hit the Domplatz. The cobbled, snow filled square stood in front of Dom St. Stephan, a giant ancient cathedral.

Hogan's lungs burned. He'd probably breathed in a pound of falling snow while he was running. His legs and hands were numb, his pants starting to get heavy as the flying snow caked on them. The sounds of the guards had died down a little but that wouldn't last for long.

Painfully Hogan pushed forward toward the cathedral, wondering if the concept of sanctuary applied in the case of a POW on enemy ground, in an enemy chapel. Worse still, he was protestant. He reached the set of heavy oaken doors right when the first shout echoed through the courtyard.

Giving the church a reluctant look, Hogan turned and ran the length of the granite steps, launching himself into the air and tumbling into the welcoming arms of snow covered bushes once more. He was on his feet and running for the Danube a minute later.

ooo000ooo

The two guards that had remained at the inn roused the sleeping prisoners and tried to force them all to their feet. Groggy and displeased, the prisoners groused loudly with little fear of the guns being pointed at them. The small Russian, the Englander and the American managed to pull themselves upright, but they made no effort to get the Frenchman off the bed.

When the taller of the two guards took a step forward to shake the prisoner, the Englishman got in his way. When the guard shoved him to the side, the Brit shoved back.

"Keep your hands off him, mate and you'll live longer." He warned.

Bernhardt, the shorter of the two guards, saw what was coming and quickly shouted, "Kurt, nein!"

Kurt had a temper, and he liked being given the opportunity to mete out punishment. But the prisoners were to be kept alive and as well as possible until they reached Berlin. Kurt was the most likely to have forgotten that order. Bernhardt was quick to remind him.

Kurt, still poised and ready to knock the Englander over the head with his rifle butt, considered his partner's words. He wanted dominance, however, and to wipe the look of defiance off the English swine's face. He lowered his rifle, and treated the man to an open-palmed slap across the face.

Newkirk exploded, grabbing the gun and wrestling with it, and a second later Carter and Caine jumped the other guard, working together to subdue him.

Before they even realized what they were doing Carter, Caine and Newkirk stood panting over two unconscious guards with stunned looks on their faces. From the bed LeBeau stared at his fellow POWs and asked, "What are we supposed to do now?"

Caine looked at Carter, then they both looked at Newkirk who had limped closer to the wall so that he could lean against it while he panted. It took him a moment to realize that the others were looking to him for the answer.

As if it were perfectly obvious what they should do, Newkirk said, "Strip off those uniforms and tie them up in the closet."

"The uniforms!?" Carter asked.

"Tie up the guards, Carter." Newkirk said, perturbed then hopped to the door to check that the hallway was still clear. "See if either of those jokers had the keys to the car, while you're at it."

"What about the Colonel?" LeBeau asked, focusing on the only task he could do without too much pain, which was to unbury himself.

"He's scarpered. Maybe he came up with something." Newkirk said, but his tone was one of doubt and mistrust. Carter caught the underlying meaning and glanced to LeBeau before he and Caine finished stripping the first of the guards and tied him tightly, hand and foot.

"Carter and I'll jump into the uniforms and-"

"No keys." Carter announced, before roughly yanking the bigger guard out of his uniform coat.

"-and we'll steal a car from the carpark."

LeBeau had grit his teeth together hard and was working on moving his legs from the bed. They felt like cracked China, but he was able to move without passing out, which was an improvement. Standing, however, still didn't sound like a good idea. Eyeing the distance from the bed to the door LeBeau wondered if he could make it on his own.

"Caine, watch the door here." Newkirk ordered once the second SS man was tied and stored in the closet. Limping to the bed, the Englishman pulled off his jacket and started dressing in one of the SS uniforms. Carter was hurriedly dressing as well, after carefully folding the loaner overalls he'd been given in Gusen.

"And then we go looking for the Colonel, oui?"

"Right, sure, Louie." Newkirk said with little conviction, carefully pushing his wounded leg into the trousers.

"He left to create a diversion.." LeBeau said, his brow beginning to furrow.

Carter kept his mouth shut, but watched the exchange between Frenchman and Englishman. Once fully dressed he picked up one of the guns and took over for Caine at the door, stepping into the hall, and keeping the door cracked open.

Newkirk didn't respond, pulling on one boot then giving serious consideration to the other.

"It is our duty to help him if we can, Newkirk." LeBeau pushed again, insistent on a response.

Newkirk was ignoring him all together now, pushing his foot into the boot and gritting his teeth hard as he pulled. His face was growing bright red, and sweat covered his brow as he forced his injured leg into the tight sleeve. It hurt like wild fire and his hands were so wet with sweat that he couldn't keep a grip on the leather. Before he could get his foot in all the way LeBeau piped up again and Newkirk gave up with an angry shout.

His heart pounding, pain radiating up his leg, he gritted his teeth hard and glared at the Frenchman. "I wouldn't be in this ruddy mess, and neither would any of you if it hadn't been for the bleedin' precious Colonel. He's risked our lives hundreds of times. It's a bloody miracle we aren't swiss cheese, all of us. Hogan is a broken mirror and a black cat combined, and you want to bloody go after him."

"Oui!"

"Why?!"

"Because he would, and has, done the same for us, and you know it! He has given up more for the sake of our countries than any of us have done for the sake of his, and he is the one out there in the snow distracting the guards, Newkirk, not you. He threw himself out of a truck to get us a warm place to sleep, and just because you got shot a little all you can do is gripe."

"A little?"

"We must go after the Colonel, and then we have to do everything we can to help the men back at that prison camp."

"You're barmy.."

"And then we have to get back to Stalag 13!"

"Wha-"

"Because Kinchloe and all the other guys are still there, and until all of us are free, I will not be giving up!"

"Me neither." Carter said from the door.

Newkirk glanced over his shoulder at the three inches of German uniform that he could see through the crack, then looked back to the fierce brown eyes of the little Frenchman. He muttered something under his breath, then gulped and looked back to the boot still half on his foot.

"What do you say, Newkirk?" LeBeau asked.

Newkirk sighed and said, "I say we can't go anywhere until I get this stinking boot on."

It took a minute for his acceptance to register but LeBeau soon favored him with a bright smile, and Caine came over to help Newkirk finish the painful dressing process.

By the time the Englander had recovered enough to get to his feet they could hear the distant echo of shots somewhere in the town. Fearing they were too late, Newkirk leaned on Carter and they hurried out of the hotel room and into the cold.

ooo000ooo

Once the soldiers realized that the frozen Danube might actually be a means of escape they started shooting at the desperate colonel who had taken to the ice. Spouts of water bursting through the frozen surface of the river started to explode to his left and right, but Hogan kept going.

He'd already considered his options. He would either hit a soft spot, fall through and freeze to death, or one of the guards would get lucky and he'd be shot to death. Or some twisted combination of both.

Why hadn't he kept his mouth shut? Why hadn't he just let Hochstetter duke it out with his kid, and stayed in the nice, safe, warm POW camp?

A bullet hit the ice just behind his heel and he felt once solid frozen water turn to slush. He made a hasty leap forward and sprawled on his stomach on solid, unperforated floe, then scrambled forward on all fours. Another twenty feet maybe and he'd be on the opposite bank. It was steep, but he could make it.

There were half-a-dozen more shots before some officer ordered them to cease firing. Hogan spared a single glance over his shoulder than doubled his efforts, once more getting to his feet and attempting to run across the ice. He heard the skitter of a solid, light weight object crossing the solid surface but ignored it for half-a-second, focused on the bank.

Then his mind decided what the object had to be and Hogan turned in time to spot the grenade, then dive for as much distance as he could manage.

The explosion went up and out, scattering snow, debris, water and chunks of ice in a broad radius. The ever moving river immediately began to overtake the breach in the ice and despite the odd sting under his armpit, Hogan blinked blinded eyes and scrambled up the hill.

It took the guards on the other side of the river just as long to recover from the bright explosion, and when they had, their quarry was no longer in sight. The snow fall had increased, if possible, and through the flying flakes they could no longer see the darker side of the Danube.

The man who had given the order to cease fire turned on the soldiers and ordered them to go back to the inn and collect the prisoners and the vehicles. Half of them would take the remaining prisoners straight to Berlin, and the other half would continue to search for the colonel on foot.

With the increased snowfall neither order was a popular one, but compared to the gruesome deaths that would await all of them if they failed, a little snow was nothing.

The men separated and the night once more fell quiet.

ooo000ooo

They took the lead car. It was the only vehicle with four working tires, and hotwiring it wasn't that big of a problem. The insignia matched their uniforms. In the end, any inconvenience for the goons that were supposed to be escorting them to Berlin, was a plus.

They left the inn and headed south, slow and easy through the snow, discussing where the colonel would have gone.

Seated in the front passenger seat Newkirk searched the glove compartment and found a map of Germany that he consulted under the weak beam of a flashlight. "This town has got to be Passau, and that's right where three rivers meet."

"Do you think he might'a found a boat?"

Newkirk glanced over to the thin American hunched over the wheel, doing everything he could to keep the car on the road and moving.

"No Carter, the river's are frozen." Newkirk shook his head, then squinted through the smear of melted snow on the windshield, trying to ignore the uncomfortable trickle of warmth headed toward his ankle.

"This storm is getting worse, Newkirk. Do you think they will come after us?" LeBeau asked from where he lay in the back, his legs propped up on blankets on Caine's lap.

"Storm or no storm, Hochstetter threatened to hang them all if they didn't get us to Berlin."

"Yeah well he can't very well hang 'em if he can't-"

The boom was unmistakable. If Carter had been going any faster, or if they had taken any other road, Caine would have missed seeing the explosion. While the others desperately tried to pinpoint the source of the sound by staring at the sky Caine knew precisely where it had come from.

"There..the river. I saw it. About a half mile from the bridge."

"Which river?" Newkirk asked, still staring at the map.

"The Danube. It looked like a hand grenade."

"Sounded like one, too." Carter agreed then carefully took the next right turn, then another right, forcing the car north.

Two blocks later he was white-knuckle driving the car into an embankment and killing the engine and the lights in one go.

"Carter, what the-"

Carter pointed at the string of uniformed men slogging through the snow two blocks ahead of them, very aware of the bright red Nazi flags flying from the fenders of the car.

All four men sat silently, as if conversation might draw the attention of the goons who were headed for the very same bridge they would need to cross if they were going to get out of town.

After the last man had disappeared into the gloom north of the Danube Newkirk reached a hand over and squeezed Carter's shoulder. "Good eye, Mate."

"H-how much you wanna bet that if they're going that way, Colonel Hogan is that way." Carter offered, worry coloring his face under the hard curve of the Nazi helmet.

Newkirk felt something solid settling in his stomach. Something a little like fate. "I'll bet me life." He said, his voice very quiet, before he tapped Carter's shoulder. "That's our route."

Carter started the car again, expertly maneuvered the wheels back onto the road and aimed the car toward the bridge, following the footprints the soldiers had left in the snow.


	10. Disappearing

On the other side of the bridge the city of Passau disappeared. The few traces of car travel that they had seen turned into vague boot tracks and absolute blackness that Carter could barely navigate. With no idea where countryside began and the road ended Andrew wasn't willing to go much faster than ten miles an hour, and it was just as well.

If he'd been going any faster the colonel would have been roadkill. As it was Carter couldn't stop the car at all when Hogan ran in front of the dim light of the headlamps. He steered for the middle of the road and let the vehicle coast to a stop even as Newkirk rolled down his window and climbed halfway out of the car to yell for the colonel's attention.

The minute he recognized Newkirk's voice Hogan put on the brakes and tried to turn around. He slipped in the snow instead, and went down. For a moment or two Newkirk was tickled at the total lack of grace the America showed in snow. Then he realized that Hogan wasn't getting back up again and ducked back into the car.

"We gotta help him." He said simply, and braced himself for the cold and the pain that leaving the car was going to bring him.

When they got to the colonel he was laying on his side, looking bewildered. One of his hands was buried under his right arm. When Carter moved it the colonel's hand and bomber jacket were slick with blood.

"Come on, sir, we're already late for the mornin' train." Newkirk muttered getting under one arm. Carter grabbed the colonel's belt and supported the majority of the officer's weight, dragging him to his feet. Halfway to the car Hogan seemed to revive a little and managed to climb on his own into the backseat where Caine threw a blanket around his shoulders. He and LeBeau had rearranged so that there would be room for him.

Newkirk, looking more pale than before, got into the car heavily favoring his leg, then turned in the seat to look in the back. "He's wounded, Caine. Under his right arm."

Even as Carter pulled the vehicle off the road most of the men were completely focused on Hogan. Leaning against the door frame, his hand putting pressure on the wound under his right arm, their commander looked exhausted.

"This snow's gettin' worse." Carter said, his face tight with concentration and worry.

Shifting carefully in the seat Newkirk took up the map and the flashlight again and studied where he imagined them to be, finally picking up the road they must have taken to get out of Passau. What he saw didn't give him any hope.

"We're in the bloody middle of nowhere." He said, settling the map against his thighs. They rode in silence for a few moments before Caine leaned forward.

"What road are we on?"

Newkirk handed the map and flashlight into the back and reached a hand over the seat to point to the dim yellow line marked on the paper.

"Keep going north. In…ten kilometers there should be a crossroad. Take a right."

Carter spared a brief glance toward Newkirk before refocusing on the road.

"There's nothin' but farms out here." Newkirk said cautiously.

"Dah. Farms, and vineyards. A friend, from school. His family owns a vineyard in this area."

"F-forgive me for saying so, Private." Hogan began, shivering badly in his corner of the back seat. "But any friend of yours living in Germany…m-may not be a friend of ours."

Caine smirked. "This friend will be. When his girlfriend and her family were ordered from Berlin he offered to house them on his farm. He was the first of my schoolmates to become part of the underground. Most of the vineyards around here have housed refugees from the Nazi-state in the past ten years."

"How do you know they haven't been found out by the Gestapo?" LeBeau asked.

Caine's smirk waned and he shrugged. "I don't know. But…what choice do we have?"

In the snow, at a steady but slow crawl Carter managed to get the vehicle to the vineyard in an hour and a half. Long before they reached it Hogan had passed out. With Newkirk's help Caine did what he could to find the wound. A piece of shrapnel had lodged itself into the colonel's side, just under his right armpit. Keeping it in was preferable to removing it and having the officer bleed out in the car.

Caine wedged what remained of the bandages from their stolen first aid kit over the wound and covered the colonel with most of the blankets.

After passing under the sign that marked the start of the vineyard proper, Carter managed to get the car halfway down the mile long dirt drive before he lost control. The car lurched into a drainage ditch and tilted precariously, but didn't flip. With painful slowness the five prisoners extracted themselves and their meager supplies from the car then considered how they would approach the house.

It was five thirty in the morning, late enough Caine said for the master of the vineyard to be awake. Along with the wine, the farm was a working dairy and the master, his school mate's father, and most of the workers were usually up and out in the barn by five at the latest.

"LeBeau can't walk, the colonel's had it, and I'm not gonna last much longer." Newkirk said, "We got one chance at this. You know these people..."

Caine understood what he meant. Those actively in the underground were suspicious of everyone, even old friends. If they were still actively involved, having a known prisoner of war show up at their door would be inviting trouble for those they were hiding. Worse still, if the friend showed up with two men in Gestapo uniform, their deaths might be short and swift.

On the other hand, if they had been discovered in the time that Caine had been away, the two Gestapo men might be welcomed with open arms, and Newkirk and Carter might be able to flim-flam warm beds, and medical care.

"I will take Carter. If there is shooting…"

"We're all dead, mate." Newkirk finished, then gave Carter the once over, straightening his helmet unnecessarily. With a nod he sent the two down the lane then sat down on the blanket they'd laid over the snow, collecting the unconscious colonel's torso into his arms and doing his best to keep the man warm with his own body heat.

Carter and Caine jogged through the snow. It wasn't as deep as it had been in Passau, but still a considerable amount and still falling. The road began to curve passing a large stone building that Caine recognized as the distillery. Another building to their left, smaller and made of brick was the smoke house. A long barrack like building behind that served as quarters for most of the workers.

A second newer building stood behind it.

"Probably a second dormitory for the farmhands. Herr Werner does good business."

Lined by trees the road continued to curve until they could see the giant barn. Behind it was a fenced in pasture and to the left was the farmhouse, a sprawling building that still managed to look quaint despite its size. Above the massive shadow of buildings, barely illuminated in the pre-dawn light Carter could see the outline of a windmill.

"K-kinda reminds me of home." He said, unable to stop the grin on his face. "Except…ya know, home is flatter."

Caine shared a brief, amused smile with the Sergeant before he nodded to the barn, and the man who stood just inside the door staring at them.

"Master Werner." Caine said, quietly. "You should probably point your gun at me."

Carter flashed Caine a surprised look that also betrayed the sudden fear racing through his chest. Caine raised his hands slightly in front of him and nodded encouragement to the sergeant before he started toward the barn.

"Was ist das?" The tall thin man standing in the small biped door to the barn seemed to exude absolute confidence and surety, even when he didn't know what was going on. Dressed in woolen pants, a checkered homemade coat and a leather kepi-style cap that he kept pulled down low over his ears, he looked to be the very image of the rural farmer.

The last thing Carter expected to see was the luger in the man's hand. He had just begun to answer his question, explaining that he caught Caine while he was trying to escape, but the sight of the gun stilled his tongue. The fact that he had a rifle in his hands didn't occur to him until after Caine had jogged forward a few steps shouting that Master Werner shouldn't shoot.

"Please Herr Werner, you must recognize me. I was a school friend of your son, Hadrien. I helped him get Ida and her family out of Berlin."

Werner squinted, keeping his gun up, but he stepped away from the protection of the barn door and finally asked, "Hochstetter?"

"Dah-agh, Yah. Wolfgang Hochstetter."

"But…but you are in a Russian uniform? And who is this man?"

"He…" Caine hesitated, wanting to trust his instinct, but recent events concerning his father had made that a foolish idea. He looked back to Carter who jumped, thought for a moment then stepped forward.

"Sie papabar wissen?"

For a tense moment, as the morning birds began to shake off the snow and fill the day with song, Werner studied the two men under his gun.

The SS man was armed, but had made no effort to cover him with the rifle, and Caine seemed perfectly friendly with him. The Gestapo man's German accent was dreadful and he looked miserable and desperate.

Papa Bear was a name often whispered far and wide along the underground communication routes but this far into the country Werner and his group had never hoped of meeting with, or even relying on the famous underground leader.

The moment Caine saw acceptance on Werner's face he began to speak. "This man, and three others half a mile down the road are with Papa Bear. They have escaped Gestapo custody and are badly wounded. We need your help. Papa Bear needs your help."

"Please…" Carter added, following the word with a sigh of relief when Herr Werner let the gun barrel drop.

"Thank you, Herr Werner. Thank you." Caine breathed out, and a moment later regretted it as Werner crushed him in a hug.

"We worried for your life, 'Olf." Werner said, using the nickname that Caine had not heard in ages.

Ten minutes later Carter, Caine, Werner and two other workers rode in a large open-bed sleigh drawn by four draft horses, quickly covering the half-mile back to the car.

They found the three men barely conscious, already covered in an inch of snow. As they transferred the wounded men to the sleigh Carter excitedly told them the brief tale of their encounter with Werner.

Another twenty minutes later they were inside the main kitchen of the farm house, settled near the roaring open fireplace with hot mugs of tea in hand.

A beautiful woman with wildly curly brunette hair, dark brown eyes, and a very pregnant belly quickly applied herself to the care of the colonel, advising two teenage girls to get this or prepare that, and gently pulling layers of soaked clothing away from the wound with careful fingers.

Her ministrations paused only when she saw Caine for the first time and rose to embrace him, kissing his cheeks, unable to hold back tears. At the questioning glances from the other men, Caine explained, "This is Ida. Hadrien's girlfr-"

"Eh…wife." Ida corrected him, smiling as she pulled at a chain around her neck, flashing a simple gold band before she tucked it back under her shirt.

Caine beamed brilliantly and announced, "Wife. She and her family live and work here, under Herr Werner's protection."

"And these men, 'Olf. We have not had an introduction." Master Aldrich Werner chided, accepting his own cup of tea from the rosy-cheeked matron of the house.

"This is Corporal Peter Newkirk of the RAF, Sergeant Andrew Carter of the American Army Air Force, Corporal Louie LeBeau of the French Air For-"

"Free French Air Force." Louie corrected eagerly.

"Free French Air Force, and Colonel Robert Hogan, better known to all of us as Papa Bear."

Werner gave a slight bow to the barely conscious colonel laid out on a cot near the fire, then nodded to each of the men in turn and said, "Colonel Hogan, you and your men are welcome in our home. We will do everything in our power to protect you. And we are eternally grateful that you have returned 'Olf to our fold."

With a barely perceptible nod, Hogan mumbled, "S'nothin'." Then went back to studying the quiet and beautiful woman tending to him.

Once Ida had the colonel's care in hand, she directed the girls to look after the other men. It was then that they discovered that Newkirk's wound had been seeping into his boot for the past few hours. His foot had swollen in that time too and they were forced to cut the boot off, revealing a pant leg soaked in blood.

Louie took one look and passed out, prompting a mild panic among the ladies until Newkirk and Carter explained the Frenchman's peculiarity.

The men received expert care, warm food and were assigned beds in the house until they were fully recovered, but for that first day they insisted on staying together in the kitchen.

Foot propped on a pillow on the hearth, Newkirk was drowsing and nearly asleep when he heard LeBeau clear his throat. For a moment he ignored the sound, figuring the Frenchman was just making himself comfortable on the pad he occupied on the floor. The second time he heard the sound Newkirk lifted his head and pried his eyes open.

Louie was looking at him and fidgeting.

Sighing, Newkirk said, "What d'you want Louie?"

"Back at the inn," LeBeau began, pondering the question before he asked, "Would you really have abandoned the colonel?"

Newkirk thought about it, resisting the urge to give Louie the answer he was looking for, and asking himself what he really thought. He looked down at the man asleep on the cot beside him, still too pale for his liking, but resting peacefully. Could he have left their CO stranded in the middle of nowhere?

With Louie there to pester him, and Carter with his facetious and undying faith in the colonel, and Caine treating the man like a surrogate father, he didn't have a choice. But if he'd been on his own, could he have done it?

Newkirk shifted on the chair and resettled his leg on the cushion then pulled the blanket to his chin and said, "Nah, Louie. Not in a million years."

ooo000ooo

The snow had slowed everything to a grinding halt. Anything south of Weimar had been buried in three feet of snow and the temperatures dipped to the teens during the day, and lower at night, making movement of any kind impossible.

Hochstetter was stuck in Linz for four days, but resolved to content himself that his men had left with the prisoners well in advance of the storm, and should have easily arrived in Berlin before the snow got too bad.

The first phone call he was able to make four days after Hogan and his men were sent to Berlin, went straight through to Gestapo headquarters in the capital city. He immediately asked to speak to the Leutnant that he had placed in charge of the prisoner convoy, but was told that the man was not available.

"Very well, I will arrive in Berlin within the next two days to begin interrogating the prisoners. I assume that the two injured men were taken to hospital and are being looked after?"

The line went dead, or so Hochstetter thought at first, listening to absolute silence. Then he heard the feldwebel on the other end take a breath. "Herr Major…what prisoners?"


End file.
